Not quite three short hours after Eric Yuen found himself running across Polk Street and up the steps of San Francisco City Hall, screaming for help, he would be acquitted.
It was, said Deputy Public Defender Charles Balara, the quickest acquittal he’d ever seen: After deliberating for perhaps not much longer than 30 minutes, the jury ruled Yuen was not guilty on all six of the misdemeanor domestic violence-related charges leveled against him.
Around seven jurors, Balara recalled, would stay afterward and question just why this case was taken to trial at all. Three would offer to wait around, even after their parking validation had expired, to walk Yuen to his car.
And that was because of that afternoon’s strange and terrible incident.
At lunchtime on April 16, Yuen wandered out of the San Francisco Superior Courthouse on McAllister Street, where he was being prosecuted. The 52-year-old saw his wife, the complaining witness in his case, who had accused him of physical violence. Or, more to the point, she saw him.
At this point, Yuen says, he took off running and she chased him. Yuen says he shouted for help as he raced across the street from Civic Center Plaza and along the sidewalk before hustling through the front doors of City Hall and telling sheriff’s deputies that he was being chased and needed their help.
The Sheriff’s Department confirmed to Mission Local that, at lunchtime on April 16, an Asian man matching Yuen’s description did indeed take refuge within City Hall. Distressed people attempting to elude pursuers by entering City Hall, the department added, is not particularly out of the ordinary.
But this, in all meanings of the word, was a special case. Yuen’s wife allegedly chased him across a busy street and into the most public of public buildings — in full view of at least three of the jurors in People v. Yuen.
This was, astoundingly, not the first time Yuen’s wife purportedly accosted him physically during the course of legal proceedings.
In December, Deputy Public Defender Balara had to shield his client in a courtroom hallway while Yuen’s wife allegedly attempted to grab her husband repeatedly; she purportedly jarred Yuen with sufficient force for the 5-foot-10-inch, 250-pound man to lose a shoe in the altercation.
Following his acquittal, Yuen did not march out of the courtroom triumphantly. Instead, he literally hid in the bushes. Balara pulled up in his silver 1982 Mercedes diesel and drove his client around the block a few times to throw off anyone intent on following him. He then dropped off Yuen discreetly at his own car.
You see a lot on San Francisco streets. You see a lot in or near San Francisco courtrooms. But this? This ain’t normal. A misdemeanor case going to trial and not resulting in a conviction, however? That’s normal.
On the body-worn camera footage documenting his Nov. 3 arrest, Yuen is cuffed and seated on a bench near a deserted Spreckels Lake. At one point, he cracks a wan smile and says, “There is nothing I can do. So I’ll relax.”
The off-screen voice of a police officer interjects: “I’m way calmer than you are, dude.”
This was an odd thing to say, considering both Yuen’s near-lethargic demeanor and the seriousness of the moment. Yuen merely muttered “Okay,” and continued staring into space.
The cop wasn’t having that. “It’s a ‘Big Lebowski’ reference! You don’t get it. It’s a movie.”
The visuals from the body-worn camera grow obscured as two officers confer; in the background, the cinephile cop can be heard pleading his case: “It’s a cult classic!” he shouts.
If police had asked, Yuen would’ve told them that it was his wife who took a swing at him but missed, striking the hard plastic console in the car. He also claims that she struck him in the head with her cellphone, which left him in a fog for several days. He says he still has a bump there.
The police talked movies with Yuen that night — but in the footage, and according to both Yuen and his attorney, they never asked what happened.
When Balara began putting together a defense, he noticed that Yuen’s wife, despite getting a restraining order, penned two handwritten letters pleading with Yuen to come back to her. She also sent him numerous text messages and several emails.
When it became clear Yuen did not want to return, Balara said, Yuen’s wife changed course and said he was a menace. The couple’s adult daughter testified in favor of her father. And, notably, photos taken on the night of the incident reveal Yuen’s wife pointing at the right side of her face — but a blurred photo she later submitted shows her pointing to the left side of her face.
And then there was the complaining witness’ very public behavior. When the judge asked several jurors if their observation of Yuen screaming while being pursued by his wife would affect their ability to be fair and impartial in the case, Balara says they told the judge that it would not.
That was apparently true: After the not-guilty verdict was rapidly delivered, jurors would admit to the defense attorney that they had already made up their minds before witnessing the chase.
“The complaining witness tried to attack our client in the hallway,” said Andrea Lindsay, a misdemeanor manager in the public defender’s office, regarding the December incident. And yet, she noted, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office “still wanted to march forward with this case.”
In the matter of People v. Yuen, there are a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous. The particulars, including a wife purportedly maltreating a husband and then calling the police, are not commonplace. Most cases do not involve the theatrical elements that distinguish this one. But, once more, the DA taking a misdemeanor case to trial and failing to secure a conviction is commonplace.
Statistics from the public defender record 85 misdemeanor trials concluding in 2025. Of those, the defense has won straight acquittals or a hung jury — considered a success by the public defender — in 44 trials. That’s nearly 52 percent.
The DA has won a straight victory — a conviction on all charges — in 20 trials. Prosecutors have additionally won at least one conviction in 21 other trials. Overall, the DA won at least one conviction a little over 48 percent of the time.
The public defender reports that two cases this year were actually dismissed after jury selection. In one, the complaining witness failed to show up.
The DA keeps its statistics differently. Its records show fewer misdemeanor trials in 2025: It only counts trials that both started and ended this year, while the public defender’s totals include trials that may have started late last year.
On its scorecard, the DA reports it won convictions in 35 misdemeanor trials, with 34 going the other way (17 acquittals, 15 hung juries and two dismissals). The DA counts as a conviction any trial in which it wins a conviction on a charge, no matter how many charges fail to stick.
“A conviction is a conviction,” the DA said via a lengthy statement to Mission Local in which it accused the public defender’s office of engaging in an effort to “mislead the public.”
“Misdemeanors encompass a wide variety of crimes that impact residents, workers, visitors and businesses across the city,” the DA continued. “We take these crimes seriously, and will do everything we can to enforce the law. We only file charges in cases that we believe we can prove.”
A number of current and former prosecutors, however, were not impressed. They described the San Francisco DA’s misdemeanor conviction numbers as “bad — startlingly bad.” One former San Francisco assistant DA said that he handled around a dozen misdemeanor trials — and won them all, outright.
If you’re wondering how the 2025 numbers stack up to prior years, the public defender’s statistics from 2018 and 2019 show it only winning “acquittals, hung juries, mistrials or dismissals” on 38 percent, and 35 percent of its misdemeanor trials, respectively.
One county over, prosecutors in San Mateo County in 2024 won convictions in two-thirds of their misdemeanor trials, with acquittals on less than 14 percent of cases, and hung juries in just under 21 percent.
Notably, San Mateo prosecutors only took 29 misdemeanor cases to trial last year. In the first eight months and change of 2025, San Francisco lapped that tally and then some.
The public defender and DA view their stats differently. But if you count hung juries as a win for the defense — which the public defender does — and if you count getting a single conviction out of multiple charges as a win for the prosecution — which the DA does — then each side is claiming victory in about half its misdemeanor trials.
These are, by no means, scintillating prosecution numbers. A great deal of time and resources is being invested in trials, with questionable returns.
In May, Matt Gonzalez, the chief attorney in the public defender’s office, wrote a letter to the presiding superior court judge. He informed her that his office would begin declaring its attorneys unavailable one day a week in misdemeanor arraignments because of crushing caseloads.
Gonzalez’s letter notes that the tally of pending misdemeanor cases was up 40 percent between January 2020 and January 2025.
Overall, the public defender reports that 72 percent of the misdemeanor charges adjudicated in a trial this year did not result in a finding of guilt.
“It’s overcharging by the DA’s office,” Lindsay said. Her public defender colleagues are “getting fantastic results. But jurors are looking at the evidence in cases … and not being driven by the political winds that seem to drive the DA’s charging decisions.”
Yuen’s case was blown out of court only weeks prior to Gonzalez’s letter.
The District Attorney’s Office, in its statement to Mission Local, noted that it was “disappointed” with the outcome of Yuen’s trial, but “we respect the jury’s verdict.”
It also acknowledged that “indeed, there were allegations that the defendant’s wife … assaulted the defendant at the courthouse, and we urged him to file a police report so that [the] incident could be investigated and if presented to our office with sufficient evidence to prosecute we would have.”
Yuen, of all people, has had an interesting experience regarding what constitutes “sufficient evidence to prosecute.” He also says “nobody told me nothing” about filing a police report, which he has no interest in doing anyway.
He and his father are instead putting their effort into filing a restraining order of their own. Yuen also wants it to be known that he no longer trusts the police or the DA’s office.
And he would like to state, on the record, that he doesn’t abide “The Big Lebowski.” When it comes to bowling movies, he prefers “Kingpin.”
This is excellent reporting. It is good to see a media outlet covering the criminal justice system in a responsible way. You do the analysis and don’t just accept what they say!
This is how systems are held accountable. Thank you
How can a 1000% political DA who lies about getting paid $150,000 in dark money and claims to be a volunteer but also leaks sealed court records ever be “held accountable” by a city attorney literally beholden to the same political interests and power brokers? It’s not happening. Even the CA Bar pulled its own teeth out rather than uphold its own findings in any meaningful way. Law is a thing of the past, we worship moneyball.
They’ve got a nice, quiet beach community here and they aim to keep it nice and quiet.
If the arrests are made and not prosecuted, it’s because the cops are giving the DA garbage. If the DA orders prosecutions and keeps losing, ask the prosecutor why the heck they’re wasting millions of dollars on garbage cases.
This DA agreed to these cases and, anyone who watched that recall election, knows exactly how indebted she is to the cops.
If anyone of the public defenders want to run for judge again, I’ll always vote for you.
The City also over-litigates civil cases. I think they hope that people suing the City run out of money or give up. It’s shocking to see them literally spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in depositions, court reporters, their attorneys’ time, jury fees, etc., over cases amounting to $20,000 in medical bills over a broken sidewalk. There’s no rational thought. They litigate everything to death. Even if they are in the wrong. Dealing with the City Attorney’s Office has been eye opening. They just don’t care. It’s like a game. But I don’t understand what the goal is…
You’re kind of ignoring a big piece of the larger puzzle, which is that people who commit felonies also commit misdemeanors. Like all the time. So if you bring someone to trial for a misdemeanor and that person is a stupid would-be or convicted felon who is afraid of going to jail, they might skip their misdemeanor trial, and then you have a bench warrant for them. And on and on. Traffic stops sometimes lead to weapons, drugs, DV, human-trafficking convictions, etc.
It’s called broken-windows law enforcement, and I’m all for it. Make crime as annoying and frustrating for people as possible. It won’t deter the big fish, but there’s always a super pragmatic part of any population that will stop doing any given thing once it becomes a hassle. Make more antisocial behavior a hassle for people. Bring lots of stuff to trial.
That’s how we get society back.
Barely got out of jury duty last year on some similar pretty innocuous Judge Judy noise.
HELLO LAW ENFORCEMENT, DA and the courts: Arrest and convict the fent/meth dealers already and get the guns off the streets.
Comparing conviction rates from different time periods or among different counties isn’t too illuminating unless you add controls to ensure you’re doing an apples-to-apples comparison. Criminal defendants properly have a built-in advantage because the DA has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a very high standard. DAs have a great deal of control over their conviction rates – if they are not extremely confident that they have enough evidence to convict, they can plea out or just drop the charges. This is one reason why DAs love their jobs – they almost always win because if they have any doubt about a case they can just drop it. So some retired DA bragging that he always won does not offer much insight. SF appears to be filing a lot more misdemeanor cases than in the last several years and refusing to plea out or drop a higher percentage of cases than they used to, hence a lower conviction rate. One can debate whether that is a sound criminal justice policy. For example, as illustrated in the “comical” example in this article, domestic violence cases are notoriously messy with victims often declining to cooperate and violence on both sides. So should the DA simply decline to prosecute messy domestic violence cases in order to keep their stats high?
So also a lawyer here, and I must address this – “criminal defendants have a built-in advantage” – because that’s simply not true. Yes, the law requires that the jury presume the defendant innocent and hold the DA to the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But if you believe they do that all the time, I have a bridge to sell you (as my old dad would say.
Also, as Prof. Rory Little, my federal criminal law professor at UC Law SF (Hastings when I went there) told my class: being a prosecutor is the easiest job in law because you have all the cards and everything is on your side – you have public opinion, jurors, judges, you usually have the law on your side, and you have all of law enforcement at your disposal. “A dog could do that job!” He said that! You stand there and say “and then what happened?” and you win. Being a defense attorney requires creativity and it requires you to know the case better than the DA and work three times as hard.
Second, no one is saying the DA should decline to prosecute DV cases because they are hard. This article, to me, is saying something about how our current DA’s office is not doing a good job of assessing the strength of its cases and/or resolving cases “in the interest of justice”. I also see this as a commentary about how politics and rhetoric by the current DA has led to the need to appear “tough on crime” and therefore not evaluate cases properly. The balancing act for defense attorneys and their clients is as follows: is the offer better than the potential trial outcome? If no, roll the dice. If the DA’s case is garbage, then they should throw it out. Many DV cases are strong and the DA doesn’t even need the alleged victim to testify or cooperate 90% of the time. Mr. Yuen’s case clearly seems like it should have been thrown out instead of wasting taxpayer money and jurors’ time. But because of our DA wanting to appear “tough on crime” and “law and order” they are not evaluating cases properly and they won’t even recognize the weakness after the fact, based on their statement.
‘Controls’, lol. No footnotes either. Some thesis this turned out to be.
Funny story! The problem is clearly San Francisco’s far-left judges. We have to do a better job of voting them out of office if we want to stop the endless cycle of catch-and-release on career criminals.
What do the so called “far-left judges” have to do with trials that were decided by juries? Clearly, the Blind lady above is blind to how our justice system works. Maybe she should read the story again to realize that it’s the juries in SF who don’t fall for Crook Jenkins’ bullshit theatricals that she calls law and order.
Clearly some people don’t understand the legal system and prefer to insist on a political narrative devoid of facts or context. This is not an article about judges throwing out cases. It’s an article about juries not finding people guilty in half the misdemeanor trials. Facts, not feelings.
this is a great example of how republicans make decisions. A full article about an abused husband and how the cops did nothing to investigate and the wife literally attacked him in front of the *jury* and the *jury* found him not guilty, so the problem is the liberal judges. And a republican will read the comment and STILL agree. It’s a cult.
Jym you do tent to blather, repeat yourself a lot, one tends to notice over and over and over. Stick to streetsblog with your mindless PR crusade against the blue collar middle class that still has a job to go to, just because you do not.
@D3 – Of course, sometimes it’s not lib’rul judges, it’s Chesa Boudin. Except when it’s Prop 47 or Heinz 57 or whatever. Lather, rinse, repeat — in particular, repeat that week’s talking points that the shouty people on teevee and podcasts say.