San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins warned that a unanimous California Supreme Court ruling on bail will force her office to release repeat offenders back onto city streets, undoing years of progress against retail theft, drug dealing, and violent crime in a city that has already become a national punchline for lawlessness.
The state's high court ruled 7-0 on April 30 that judges must set bail at amounts defendants can actually afford. Only those accused of violent or sexual offenses may be denied bail outright. Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote the opinion, which grew out of a case involving a homeless man arrested for buying a $7 cheeseburger with a found credit card.
Within days, defense lawyers in San Francisco cited the new precedent to seek the release of more than 90 inmates jailed on drug dealing, theft, and other charges. Jenkins told the New York Post the consequences would be immediate and severe.
"Not only is this a devastating ruling for the DA's office, but a devastating ruling for our state and for San Francisco."
That quote captures a prosecutor who has spent years trying to reverse San Francisco's reputation as a haven for shoplifters, open-air drug markets, and career criminals, only to watch the state's highest court hand defense attorneys a new tool to spring their clients.
The DA pointed to San Francisco police data showing real declines in crime between 2024 and 2025. Burglaries fell 26 percent. Robberies dropped 23 percent. Vehicle theft plummeted 44 percent. Jenkins credited swift pretrial detention and consequences for the improvement.
Now she fears the court has kicked the legs out from under that strategy. As the New York Post reported, Jenkins said the ruling will make it far harder to detain repeat offenders, drug dealers, auto burglars, retail thieves, and even some felons caught with guns, before trial.
"We have demonstrated that swift detention and consequences has worked and now we're going to reverse all of this."
Jenkins did not mince words about where this leaves San Francisco's image. She told the Post her city would "continue to be the brunt of every joke and attack on Fox News, and rightfully so."
The kind of offenders Jenkins worries about are not hypothetical. The reporting lays out specific cases that illustrate the revolving-door problem San Francisco has fought to contain.
Aziza Graves took more than $60,000 in goods from a single Target store across 120 separate visits. Tyrese Boswell allegedly hit one Walgreens 27 times in under six months. One woman allegedly went on a 2023 spree that included a hammer attack and a robbery with scissors. After the ruling, she walked free wearing an electronic monitor.
These are not first-time, low-level defendants caught in a tough spot. They are, by any common-sense measure, repeat offenders whose pattern of behavior poses a clear risk to store employees, shoppers, and neighborhoods. The court's new standard treats their offenses as nonviolent, and therefore subject to affordable bail, regardless of how many times they have cycled through the system.
The California Supreme Court has drawn intense public attention this year, much like the political backlash triggered by other high-profile court rulings that have reshaped policy in ways elected officials did not anticipate.
The timing of the ruling makes the stakes even harder to ignore. Just this week, San Francisco police executed a drug bust that netted 338.5 grams of narcotics and 62 arrests. Of those 62, a staggering 52 already had outstanding warrants.
That ratio, 52 out of 62, is the kind of number that should stop anyone defending lenient pretrial release in its tracks. It means the overwhelming majority of people caught dealing drugs in San Francisco were already wanted for something else. They were already supposed to be in custody or under supervision. The system had already failed to hold them accountable once.
Under the new bail standard, many of those defendants may now argue they cannot afford the bail set by a judge. If the court's logic holds, judges will have to lower bail to whatever the defendant can pay, or release them outright.
The pattern echoes frustrations conservatives have raised about high-profile political attacks on court decisions across the country, where rulings reshape the ground rules and elected officials are left scrambling to respond.
What makes the California ruling especially notable is that it moves in the opposite direction from the rest of the country. The Marshall Project reported that California is now breaking from a national trend toward tougher pretrial detention rules. Voters in Alabama and Indiana will decide ballot measures this year to expand pretrial holding authority in their states.
President Donald Trump has also acted on the issue, issuing an executive order targeting cashless bail policies. The federal push and the state-level ballot measures reflect a broad, bipartisan recognition that letting repeat offenders walk free before trial is a failed experiment.
California's Supreme Court, however, went the other way. A 7-0 opinion, not a narrow, contested split, but a unanimous decision, declared that the state constitution requires bail to be attainable for nonviolent defendants. The ruling leaves prosecutors like Jenkins with fewer tools and communities with less protection.
Courts across the country have become flashpoints for political conflict, as seen in recent Supreme Court interventions that have reshaped everything from election maps to criminal justice. The California bail decision fits squarely in that pattern, judges imposing sweeping policy changes that elected officials and voters did not choose.
The case that gave rise to this ruling involved a homeless man who used a found credit card to buy a $7 cheeseburger. On its face, that is a sympathetic fact pattern, a minor, nonviolent offense committed by someone with nothing. It is the kind of case that makes for a clean legal argument about proportionality and fairness.
But the ruling does not apply only to people who buy cheeseburgers with found credit cards. It applies to Aziza Graves and her 120 trips to Target. It applies to Tyrese Boswell and his 27 visits to Walgreens. It applies to the woman with the hammer and the scissors. It applies to the 52 people arrested in a drug bust who already had outstanding warrants.
That is the gap between the courtroom and the street. The justices wrote their opinion around the most sympathetic defendant imaginable. The consequences will be felt by store clerks, small business owners, and residents who have to live with the results.
Jenkins, to her credit, has been willing to say so plainly. She is a Democratic prosecutor in one of the most progressive cities in America, and she is telling anyone who will listen that this ruling will make her city less safe. That is not a partisan talking point. It is a warning from the person whose office has to deal with the fallout.
The broader trend of courts drawing fierce public criticism is not limited to criminal justice. Recent Supreme Court decisions on congressional maps have generated similar frustration from officials who feel judges are overriding the democratic process.
Several open questions remain. The specific case name and docket number behind the ruling have not been widely reported. It is unclear which judge released the woman now wearing an electronic monitor, or how many of the 90-plus inmates whose release was sought have actually walked free. The exact composition of the 338.5 grams of narcotics seized in the drug bust has not been specified.
What is clear is the direction. California's highest court has told judges they must make bail affordable for nonviolent defendants. Defense attorneys are already using the decision aggressively. And a district attorney who has staked her career on holding repeat offenders accountable says the ruling will undo the progress her city has made.
The rest of the country is moving toward tougher pretrial detention. California just moved the other way, unanimously, from the bench, without a single vote cast by the public.
When even San Francisco's own prosecutor says the state has gone too far, it might be time to listen.
