Two people who filed ethics charges against SF DA Brooke Jenkins for improperly accessing sensitive information got Jenkins sentenced into a diversion program, and now they’re both appealing that sentence, saying Jenkins deserves a harsher punishment.

It’s no secret that San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins frequently lashes out at judges in public, and it’s pretty clear that many in the the judicial community have no love for Jenkins either. This became even more apparent in 2022 when a retired judge filed an ethics complaint against Jenkins that got Jenkins thrown into a rehabilitative diversion program last month. (The irony is that Jenkins railed against her predecessor Chesa Boudin’s use of diversion programs, as these are less severe forms of punishment for defendants.)    

Now, that same judge, as well as one other person who filed ethics charges against Jenkins, have appealed that diversion program decision with the California State Bar. Jenkins’s current diversion sentence likely just requires her to take some class or course, the two appellants think she deserves a harsher punishment.

Those two appellants, who both originally filed the ethics complaints, are former SF Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Grayner, and retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Martha Goldin. Mission Local obtained the appeal letter from Judge Goldin.

That letter said there was “new evidence” that “Jenkins lied to the State Bar” about this case. Whatever that alleged lie was, it is not detailed.

“The State Bar should reopen this matter,” Goldin also said in her letter, “because diversion is simply the wrong result for an attorney who fails to show the slightest remorse or acknowledgement of error.”

The complaint is about Jenkins’s handling of confidential information in the prosecution of Troy McAlister, who notoriously killed two women in a hit-and-run on New Year’s Eve 2020 while allegedly driving a stolen car and high on meth. Jenkins is accused of improperly accessing McAlister’s file, and sending it to her colleague Don Du Bain’s personal email. Neither Jenkins nor Du Bain had anything to do with McAlister’s case. Both publicly campaigned against Boudin during the recall campaign, often citing the McAlister case.  

The State Bar wrote in their judgement against Jenkins, “There is evidence that Jenkins should not have accessed or handled McAlister’s rap sheet in the way she did given the statutory limits on access and use of criminal history information.”

So Jenkins got a light punishment, and now the people who filed complaints against her are appealing in hopes of her getting a more serious punishment.

To point out the obvious, there is clearly some kind of vendetta here. Why do retired judge Martha Goldin and former SF Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Grayner have such a personal thing against Brooke Jenkins?

In Grayner’s case, this seems clear. Jenkins demoted Grayner and then Grayner resigned once Jenkins took office, and Grayner is now an assistant DA in Alameda County. And it seems clear in retrospect that Jenkins was not honest about her role in the recall Boudin campaign whose work culminated in her getting Boudin’s job.

But Judge Goldin’s beef with Jenkins makes less sense. She’s a retired LA judge, after all! So here we can only speculate, but Goldin was a Boudin supporter. Though more specifically, Jenkins’s frequent attacks on judges have resulted in some of those judges getting death threats, so maybe Goldin took offense to that on behalf of her colleagues.

The appeals were filed “this month” according to Mission Local, and the State Bar has yet to make any decision on them.

Related: State Bar Orders DA Jenkins Into a Diversion Program Over Ethics Violation Allegations [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 31: San Francisco district attorney Brooke Jenkins speaks during a news conference on October 31, 2022 in San Francisco, California. Jenkins announced state level charges against David Wayne DePape who attacked Paul Pelosi, husband of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, after breaking into their home. DePape is being charged with attempted murder, residential burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder and threats to a public official and their family. The U.S. attorney has also filed federal charges against DePape. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)