The Hearing

7

Shairon Pratt chose the moment with some care. She had been invited to give a talk at the Commonwealth Club on her tenure to date as District Attorney, the office's most notable successes and failures, the evolution of her philosophy on criminal justice, and her plans for the future. Quite a few members of the media were on hand, as well as many of the city's business and political elite. It was an ideal setting – quite a bit more high-toned than a Hall of Justice impromptu press conference, a slam dunk of a photo op, a chance to explain her absolutely unexpected position shift in word units longer than sound bytes.

Because it had been playing so well in the business community and the newspapers for over two years, she began with a recap of her office's continuing high-moral-tone campaign against Gironde Industries, the French company whose winning low-ball bid for the $25 million airport baggage carousels had rocked the Board of Supervisors and infuriated many of the largest and most well-connected construction firms who did business in the city.

A foreign company like Gironde wasn't about to be able to fulfill their contract without working with armies of local subcontractors – sheet metal workers, tile layers, painters, electricians, brickmasons, and so on. These companies, in turn, named by Gironde in their proposal, had all guaranteed that they were in compliance with the city's minority subcontracting quota.

Gabe Torrey understood business far better than Pratt did, and he had alerted her to the likelihood of fraud in the negotiations. Gironde simply couldn't do the job for the amount that they had bid otherwise. Torrey's opinion was that Gironde hired subcontractors for the proposal period, then laid them off immediately thereafter; that none of the subs had anywhere near the mandated number of women or minorities; he'd bet that many had women or minorities as titular owners and were paid minimum wage. Gironde would put people on the payroll, then give them a handful of cash to stay home and lie about working on the project.

Pratt had taken it from there.

And the District Attorney's office had gone to work with a vengeance, convening a grand jury, subpoenaing witnesses, obtaining search warrants on the offending subcontractors, seizing their records without warning, bringing the frauds to light time and again.

It developed into a major story – reporters soon discovered that Gironde had human rights violations reported on jobs they had worked on in Senegal, in the Caribbean, in the Philippines. The owner of the company, Pierre Coteau, owned another company that sold animal furs. How, Pratt demanded, could a benevolent and liberal San Francisco award a contract to such a despicable company?

At the request of the Board of Supervisors, Gironde was now preparing a revised second bid with a new list of subcontractors. But the feeling in the Board and in the city at large was so strong against them, and in favor of Pratt on this issue, that no one believed they would keep the job. 'And,' Pratt concluded, 'this is the kind of law I will continue to practice in my second term. These are the kinds of people I will prosecute – those who would unfairly take jobs from the honest citizens and hard-working business people of this city.'

The applause washed over her. She loved Gironde. It was the perfect San Francisco prosecution. Not only was the issue one of high moral tone, it had opened the coffers of local contractors who before Gironde would not have given her the time of day.

And now, having reminded everyone of that, she moved to crime with the usual pablum that her staff had spun from the statistical flotsam garnered from any number of often conflicting sources, taking whatever numbers made her look best.

They'd had setbacks early on, she admitted, but the numbers on violent crime were down in 'the last several months' – actually only in January, but this number had been down enough that Sharron could bring in November and December, when crime had actually been up, and the average would still be less than it had been in the late summer and early autumn.

They were sending more criminals to jail. This was true because the DA's prosecutors were accepting pleas in exchange for shorter jail terms rather than taking criminals to trial. This speeded up the process and let felons out of jail sooner, but Pratt could say they were sending more bad folks to the slammer.

She followed up by stating that she was accomplishing all of her good works in spite of the continuing lack of cooperation from the police department. During her last election campaign, she'd fashioned some minor, unproven and isolated allegations of police brutality into a major plank of her platform. She was going to seek out and prosecute bad cops. She was going to create a task force. She was going to bust the 'good old boy' network of redneck cops, never mind that the San Francisco police department was fully integrated as to gender and race at all levels of command, and also had fewer police brutality incidents or complaints than any other city of comparable size in the United States.

The District Attorney's office, Pratt concluded, was functioning 'with an efficiency that is the envy of every other bureaucracy in the city and county of San Francisco'.

She looked out over the crowd, deciding that she had them, that the time was ripe. Lifting some pages from the podium, she dropped them onto the table next to her. 'All that said,' she continued, 'it must be admitted now that, with hindsight, I can see that some of the outreach programs, initiated by my office in the early days of this administration, and with the best of intentions, may not have achieved the success that I hoped for.'

A palpable sense of expectation swept the room. Suddenly people were sitting up straighter, paying attention. She paused significantly, lifted her chin, steeled her gaze. 'In preparation for coming to talk to all of you today, late last week I had written the usual political speech to tell you how well we're doing. And in fact, as I've indicated, there are areas of success to which we can point with pride. Now, though, I'm going to leave my prepared remarks. Please bear with me as I speak from my heart.

'Last weekend, the city suffered a terrible loss. I'm speaking, of course, of Elaine Wager, not only the daughter of our late beloved senator, but in her own right one of the great lights in the city's firmament.' Pratt paused for a sip of water, gathered herself, and went on. 'One of the most difficult lessons I've had to learn on the prosecution side of the bar is that there is real evil cast among us. My training and background has led me to try and understand the causes of anti-social behavior and to seek solutions through incarceration, yes, but also through counseling and education. I remain proud of the programs we've adopted that seek to temper justice with mercy, that have tried to inject compassion and understanding into the judicial process.

'But the events of the past few days have brought home some hard truths and today I am here to deliver a message that may have become blurred in my administration's zeal for fairness, tolerance, and empathy for desperate people who are driven to desperate acts. And that message is this: people who break the law in San Francisco are going to be punished.'

Pratt let the substantial round of applause wash over her, took another sip of water, then waited for silence. When it came, she spoke in a voice thick with conviction – it was time to go into campaign mode. 'There are those who say that I am soft on crime, that I am too compassionate to fulfill the duties of District Attorney. To those people, let me announce what may be correctly interpreted as a sea change in the policy of this administration.

'The police have arrested a man – a homeless man, a drug addict – who has confessed to the murder of Elaine Wager, a murder in the course of which he took her purse, jewelry, and other possessions. California law defines murder in the commission of a robbery as a special circumstances crime and prescribes only two possible penalties – life in prison without the possibility of parole, and death.'

Pratt was aware of the drama of the moment. The silence in the room was perfect – even the waiters were still, hanging on her conclusion.

'I want there to be no mistake. It is the intention of the District Attorney to seek the death penalty in this case. This is the word I'm putting out to the criminal element in this city, the line that today I draw in the sand – street violence, all violent crime, stops here. The law will be enforced. For as long as I remain District Attorney, here is the policy of my office: if you are unfortunate or dispossessed, mercy will still have its place…' her hands gripped either side of the podium as she looked out over the multitude, 'but if you break the law, justice will trump mercy every-' she brought down her fist, 'single-' again, the fist, 'time.'

After a short stunned silence, a man at one of the front tables began to applaud and it was as though a dam had broken. The ensuing ovation brought the entire dining room to its feet.