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San Francisco Chronicle - March, 01 2002

PRESUMED GUILTY: Documentary. 9 tonight, KQED (Channel 9). Television movies, not to mention recurring cop and lawyer series, only dream of having the goods that “Presumed Guilty” has bursting out of its seams.

As part of KQED’s “Bay Window” series, “Presumed Guilty” gets its first television airing tonight and then will air nationally on the PBS system in the fall. For Bay Area viewers, there’s plenty of headline-grabbing history wrapped inside.

Shot over the course of three years, “Presumed Guilty” looks at the inner workings of the San Francisco public defender’s office and its struggle to represent the 90 percent of the population that can’t afford a personal lawyer.

The public defender’s office has 80 attorneys handling roughly 19,000 cases a year. At the time of the filming, Jeff Adachi was second in command, the chief attorney in the office. Adachi is described by a fellow attorney this way: “If this was some sort of tribe, he’d be the high priest.”

San Franciscans know by now one of the kickers in this documentary—that despite years of dedication to the job and the respect of his fellow public defenders, when Adachi’s boss quits, Mayor Willie Brown swears in politically connected family friend Kimiko Burton, who promptly informs Adachi that he’s no longer needed.

For filmmakers Pamela Yates and Peter Kinoy, the news is just another eye- opening revelation in a documentary that is already touching on two famous trials—the murder-for-hire case known as the “Pink Tarantula Murder” and the “Tenderloin Confidential” trial, where a powerful gangster was gunned down by a teenager.

Yates and Kinoy get to the essence of a public defender’s life, what motivates them to take a job where you normally lose far more often than win, by focusing on Will Maas, who’s representing the defendant in the murder-for- hire of a San Francisco hairdresser, and Adachi, who’s representing the defendant, now an adult, in the Tenderloin gangland killing.

Mixed in, we get seasoned advice and perspective from public defender Stephen Rosen, someone who understands the complexities of fighting the good fight (especially when not everyone sees it that way). The filmmakers also follow two rookie defenders, Phoenix Streets and Michele Forrar.

Forget “The Practice” or “Philly” or any of the other courtroom dramas. “Presumed Guilty” is the real deal, and the richness the filmmakers extract from the public defenders’ real lives is riveting television. (This documentary recently ran at the Roxie as well.)

It doesn’t hurt “Presumed Guilty” that there’s a rogues’ gallery of witnesses, sartorially challenged investigators, salacious trial details and real lives at risk. “Presumed Guilty” gets to the gray area of public defense - - that sometimes these people really are guilty, that sometimes defending them takes a toll on your soul and that not everyone who’s guilty is a monster at heart.

That’s always the tough trick—avoiding the neat black-and-white morality of a TV show and trying to understand the complexities of crime in this country.

If viewers don’t know or don’t remember the outcome of those two celebrated cases, it only heightens the built-in drama of the documentary. But even if they do, Yates and Kinoy get their cameras into the courtroom and into the jail cells and frame each case with humanity, making each trial more compelling than it might have appeared to be in the paper or on the news.

It’s pure luck, in a sense, that the likable Adachi—who joins his fellow attorneys in opening up his emotions for the documentary—gets the shocking news of his dismissal on camera.

San Francisco politics rears its ugly head in the public defender’s office just when the filmmakers have shown the grueling, emotional roller-coaster lifestyle they lead, and Brown and Burton look like the interlopers they were.

The film ends as Adachi is running for public defender against the woman who fired him, and you can’t help getting a sweet rise knowing he defies the odds as justice prevails at the polls.

But the real meat of “Presumed Guilty” is not so much about the trials that are happening during this three-year filming period. It’s about Maas’ raw, out- there passion or Rosen’s wily insights into the profession or Streets’ (who’s got the style and aplomb to star in his own show) fulfilling his calling in life.

There’s not a lot of glamour being a public defender. The people who do it are passionate about justice and making sure the system doesn’t unfairly put away someone innocent. The attorneys here acknowledge that a lot of the dregs come through, looking to get off, but they remain focused on the big picture --

that even if you’re presumed guilty, that doesn’t mean you are.