San Francisco just can’t seem to get its act together. The latest failure involves the courts which have struggled to keep up with the caseload since the start of the pandemic. But a ruling last month from an Appeals Court means that the city’s time is up.
In a ruling that could lead to dismissal of hundreds of Bay Area criminal cases, a state appeals court says a San Francisco woman was denied her constitutional right to a speedy trial by years of delays that a trial judge attributed to the pandemic and overcrowded courtrooms.
Lynette Mendoza was charged in October 2021 with two misdemeanors for allegedly driving while drunk and a third for driving at night without her headlights on. She pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for trial in March 2023, weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom ended the “stayat-home” order he had issued nearly three years earlier because of COVID-19.
But a…
