Judges and Judiciary
Jan. 27, 2006
Compassionate Player Heeds Rule of Law First
SAN FRANCISCO - When two seriously ill women asked permission in San Francisco federal court to smoke and grow marijuana without fear of federal prosecution, U.S. District Judge Martin J. Jenkins turned them down.
U.S. District Judge
Northern District, San Francisco
Career highlights: Appointed by President Clinton to U.S. District Court for the Northern District, 1997; elevated by Gov. Pete Wilson to Alameda County Superior Court, 1992; appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian to Alameda County Municipal Court, 1989
Law school: University of San Francisco School of Law
Age: 52
It wasn't because the judge didn't believe in the plaintiffs' grave need for medical marijuana.
In fact, Jenkins said, the women certainly made a showing that Western medicine had not provided them with relief.
But the lawsuit did not come down to whether marijuana would ease their suffering. It turned on a legal issue: whether the Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to prohibit the cultivation and use of marijuana even if California allows residents to use the drug for medical purposes. Raich v. Ashcroft, 02-4872.
And in answering that question, Jenkins found that he had to follow higher-court rulings, not his heart.
"You can't help but be somewhat compassionate for people who are suffering," Jenkins said. "But you do what the law says [to] do."
Jenkins, a San Francisco native and federal judge since 1997, said he believes all judges probably wrestle with such issues of compassion.
"But as you strip away and strip away and strip away, you are able to try to focus on the legal issues and the facts that illuminate them and have the decision be rested objectively on the facts of the law," Jenkins said. "The more you're there, the closer you are to doing what you're supposed to do."
A federal appellate panel disagreed with Jenkins on the Raich case, but he ultimately was vindicated by the highest court in the land. The case is back in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The losing attorney in the case before Jenkins had only good things to say about the judge.
"In our appearances with him, he always exhibited a great deal of humanistic concern for our clients," said David M. Michael, a sole practitioner in San Francisco. "We have a great deal of respect for that."
In all fairness, Michael added, "Jenkins honestly felt he was bound by 9th Circuit precedent, and, in a way, his opinion invited the appeal."
In his decade and a half as a judge, Jenkins, who moonlighted as a high school and college football referee until he tore his Achilles tendon playing tennis, has handled a wide range of high-profile disputes.
The judge made history when he approved class status for a gender discrimination case against Wal-Mart in 2004. With more than 1.5 million potential plaintiffs, it was the country's largest civil rights class action against a private employer ever certified.
Then there was the trial of a former Fortune 500 executive charged with securities fraud, the prosecution of two Pelican Bay State Prison guards, and the money-laundering case against the former prime minister of Ukraine.
"I seem to have gotten lucky in terms of the draw," Jenkins said, laughing, as he discussed his career while surrounded by family photographs, neatly stacked files and cases of leather-bound books in the spacious chambers of his 19th-floor courtroom.
Through his handling of those cases and many others, the judge has earned a reputation as a hardworking and fair jurist, attorneys said.
"I think he's an excellent judge," said James M. Finberg, a Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein partner in San Francisco. "It's a combination of intelligence and diligence. ... He must spend a lot of time at his job."
Jenkins has an "exuberant spirit" on the bench and was extremely knowledgeable and prepared while handling the Raich case, Michael said.
"He knew every single nuance of every single constitutional issue that we were addressing on the motion," Michael said.
The judge tries very hard to figure out where the law stands and follow it, said James B. Lewis, a patent litigation partner at Bingham McCutchen in East Palo Alto who has appeared before Jenkins.
"Sometimes you see a judge who seems to want more to create the law, drive it in a particular direction, and I haven't seen that with Judge Jenkins," Lewis said. "I think he tries to play it as it lays."
Jenkins was just 35 in 1989 when Gov. George Deukmejian appointed him to the Alameda County Municipal Court. Two and a half years later, he was elevated to the county's Superior Court, where he spent some time in the juvenile division.
"I don't know that I've ever done anything that was more challenging and more important than presiding over delinquency and dependency cases," Jenkins said.
Since President Clinton appointed him to the federal bench in 1997, Jenkins has returned to San Francisco, where he sits in a courtroom just a few miles from the Ingleside District, the mostly working-class neighborhood where he grew up.
"Most of the people had blue-collar jobs," said Jenkins, whose dad supported the family working as a Coit Tower janitor. "But they bought and owned their homes, made sure their children got good educations."
Jenkins graduated from Lincoln High School in the Sunset District and attended Santa Clara University, where he played varsity football and tennis.
After earning a bachelor's degree in history in 1977, he played as a defensive back for the Seattle Seahawks, although his football career didn't last long.
"I was not a great football player," Jenkins told the Daily Journal in 1998. "So after weighing the options, I thought I would have more opportunities in the law."
He entered the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he earned a degree in 1980 and then took a job with the Alameda County district attorney's office.
After that, he went to work for the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he prosecuted Ku Klux Klan members and others accused of racial violence.
In a 1998 interview, Jenkins said he still remembered the racial epithets made by three men on trial for burning a cross on the lawn of a racially mixed couple. The job cast him in the role of civil rights champion, and it had its trying moments.
"It was the most frustrating job, because the jurors many times had the same mindset as the people I was prosecuting," Jenkins recalled in 1998.
After his stint with the Justice Department, Jenkins was a litigator at Pacific Bell's San Francisco office. At the urging of several local judges, he moved to Oakland and applied for appointment to the Alameda County Municipal Court.
More than 15 years later, Jenkins last January found himself smack in the middle of a high-stakes corporate fraud case against Richard Hawkins, the former chief financial officer of medical services and device giant McKesson Corp. When Hawkins waived his right to a jury, Jenkins took the role of fact finder in the complicated accounting fraud trial. Four months after the trial's conclusion, Jenkins issued a 38-page opinion acquitting Hawkins.
Now, Jenkins is at the center of a second McKesson-related trial, scheduled to start in September. Former executive Charles McCall has been charged with securities fraud and wanted Jenkins to decide his case, too. This time, however, prosecutors did not consent.
The Hawkins trial wasn't the first time Jenkins blew a big hole in a federal fraud prosecution case. In what he describes as his most-complicated case, Jenkins dismissed half of the 55 counts brought against Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko.
Ultimately, the prime minister was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to launder $21 million into U.S. banks, as well as a number of wire-fraud and transportation-of-stolen-property counts.
The case required Jenkins to consider some unique questions of law, especially because the prosecution was applying American statutes to conduct carried out in foreign countries, according to Jones Day's Martha A. Boersch. The San Francisco partner prosecuted the case while she was at the U.S. attorney's office.
Although Boersch didn't agree with all of Jenkins' rulings during the trial, she said he devoted a lot of time to thinking through the questions.
"It was a complicated case with novel and challenging procedural and legal issues, and Judge Jenkins tackled all of the issues fairly and thoughtfully," Boersch said.
Since the case hasn't concluded, Jenkins would not discuss it.
"Probably one of the most challenging cases that I've had legally, and otherwise, is the Lazarenko case.
"But Powers and Garcia is right there, too," Jenkins said.
In that case, Jenkins presided over the conviction of two Pelican Bay State Prison guards for conspiracy to violate the civil rights of inmates at the prison by soliciting assaults between inmates. U.S. v. Powers and Garcia, CR00-0105.
"You know, we had some really interesting and unclear legal issues [in that case]," Jenkins said.
One centered on defendant Michael Powers' right to have his retained counsel when the attorney had represented some of the potential witnesses in the grand jury, Jenkins said.
In a June 2000 ruling, Jenkins granted the prosecution's motion to relieve Powers' attorney, on the grounds he presented a possible conflict.
"The broad parameters of the law were clear, but that was a very tough call," Jenkins said. "You don't really want to relieve counsel."
The motion played a significant role in the defendants' appeal to the 9th Circuit, when defense attorneys argued the government denied Powers his right to counsel when the court disqualified his attorney.
Matthew B. Pavone, who represented Jose Garcia in the case, had "nothing but good things" to say about the judge.
Pavone, a San Francisco sole practitioner, didn't always agree with Jenkins' rulings but said the defense attorneys thought the judge handled a complicated case well.
"You had people coming in [as witnesses] who were maximum-security inmates," Pavone said. "And there were some pretty tricky legal issues. ... He rolled up his sleeves and dug in there."
When he's not on the bench, Jenkins is an active member of his Roman Catholic church. He also is a frequent speaker at high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and has worked with local attorneys to take students on educational tours of the courthouse.
Jenkins visits the schools because he likes to have his ear to the ground and "know what's really going on out there." He talks to the students about the court system and shares his own story.
Jenkins wants the kids to know they have many opportunities. But he reminds them there's a price they have to pay: hard work.
In spite of his community activities, Jenkins, who is not married and has no children, doesn't see himself as a role model.
"I've worked hard, but I don't see myself as special or sort of a trend-setter or a leader for someone else," he said.
But Jenkins, who is black, has come to realize, over time, that others do see him that way, especially young black men and women. And that's a responsibility he takes seriously.
"I think I owe it to everybody," he said.
Working hard and respecting others are two things he learned from his parents, who were raised in the South, Jenkins said.
Though they weren't always respected, they recognized - in the way of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement - that change was made not by responding tit for tat but by taking the high ground, Jenkins said.
"I lose my temper sometimes, because I'm not perfect," Jenkins said. "But I try to be mindful of the fact that it's important for people to feel like they were heard and understood."
Here are some of Jenkins' recent cases and the lawyers involved:
• Raich v. Ashcroft, 02-4872 - constitutionality of the Controlled Substances Act regarding possession of marijuana for medicinal use
For the plaintiffs: Robert A. Raich, Oakland, David M. Michael, San Francisco, and Randy E. Barnett, professor, Boston University School of Law
For the defense: Mark Quinlivan, U.S. attorney's office, Boston
• U.S. v. Lazarenko, 00-0284 - money laundering, wire fraud, transport of stolen funds
For the prosecution: Martha A. Boersch, formerly with the U.S. attorney's office and now with Jones Day, San Francisco
For the defense: Daniel A. Horowitz, Oakland; Dennis P. Riordan, Riordan & Horgan, San Francisco; and Doron Weinberg, Weinberg & Wilder, San Francisco
• U.S. v. Hawkins, 04-0106 - securities fraud, making false statements to accountant, conspiracy
For the prosecution: Timothy P. Crudo and Haywood S. Gilliam Jr., U.S. attorney's office, San Francisco
For the defense: Melinda L. Haag, Walter F. Brown Jr. and William F. Alderman, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, San Francisco
• Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 01-2252 - employment discrimination class action
For the plaintiffs: Brad S. Seligman and Jocelyn D. Larkin, The Impact Fund, Berkeley
For the defense: Nancy Abell of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, Los Angeles
• U.S. v. Powers, 00-0105 - criminal conspiracy to violate civil rights
For the prosecution: Andrew S. Huang, formerly with the U.S. attorney's office and now with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw, San Francisco; Jeffrey J. Cole, formerly with the U.S. attorney's office and now with Deloitte & Touche, San Francisco; and Melinda L. Haag, formerly with the U.S. attorney's office and now with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe
For the defense: Matthew B. Pavone, Novato; Dennis P. Riordan, Riordan & Horgan, San Francisco, and Wayne L. Ordos, Sacramento
Anna Oberthurn
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