San Francisco judge labeled RACIST for locking up 18-year-old who opened fire on a city street and was then found with a machine gun
An 18-year-old accused of opening fire on a San Francisco street, and then found with a machine gun, and then caught making a prison ‘shank’, has labeled a judge at the city’s Hall of Justice RACIST for calling him dangerous and locking him up.
Marquez Davis will appear today in court to demand a full review under the ‘Racial Justice Act’ after what his attorney alleges were Judge Brian Hill’s “biased” and “racially coded” remarks during a preliminary hearing at which he concluded Davis must stay behind bars to protect public safety.
By law, Hill — a visiting judge who retired last year from Santa Barbara County Superior Court — is not allowed himself to decide the issue. Instead another judge, Teresa Caffese, will determine whether the allegations made against him hold enough water for a full evidentiary hearing to go forward.
Prosecutors say that, on February 10 2025, Davis and an accomplice, Jamelle Newman, opened fire on a Volkswagen SUV, whose female driver had parked beside the Mendell Street apartments in the city’s Bayview district.
They pursued the vehicle on foot, continuing to fire, as the driver attempted to flee.
The pair then ran to a silver Honda and drove away. It was stopped almost immediately by SFPD officers who responded promptly after hearing the shooting.
In a subsequent search of Davis’ home, investigators found an “Uzi-style fully automatic assault weapon”, a high-capacity magazine and ammunition.
Cops knew Davis by sight because they had arrested him two months earlier. Then, a 911 call alerted police to a fight in a car and, on arrival at the scene, Davis fled from them. A Glock .40 caliber handgun, modified to fire automatically, was found near where he was eventually captured.
Prosecutors later charged Davis with one count of ‘custodial manufacture of a weapon’ relating to his custody in San Francisco County Jail #3 in San Bruno.
“On one of the occasions he’s been shooting at people. We would really have to have a leap of faith to think that, at eighteen, he’s going to change what appears to be a character trait for possessing and using firearms. And I don’t have that.”
Judge Brian Hill
On March 17 2025 Judge Hill, noting that Davis had now been found with a gun twice in as many months, expressed doubt that he could be released without posing a danger to the community.
“On one of the occasions he’s been shooting at people,” observed Hill.
“We would really have to have a leap of faith to think that, at eighteen, he’s going to change what appears to be a character trait for possessing and using firearms. And I don’t have that.”
This was against a backdrop of what was referred to in court only as “concerning” relating to the defendant’s juvenile record.
“The judge’s choice of language,” complained public defender Lilah Wolf in a motion, “reveals his view of Davis not as an individual capable of growth or rehabilitation, but as a typecast caricature of a young, gun-toting [b]lack male who will inevitably re-offend despite the significant evidence in the form of letters of support and community engagement showing his positive character.”
“The court focused on Davis’ perceived character and the nature of the offense, rather than on individualized factors or evidence.”
“Crucially, Judge Hill described Davis in terms that suggested a fixed criminal propensity,” she added.
To bolster her position, Wolf promised to provide an “expert declaration” from law professor and ‘Soros fellow’ Jody Armour — one of the most radical progressives working in today’s academy, whose work focuses on what he refers to as mass incarceration, police brutality and racial profiling.
Wolf said that Davis was an honor roll student who planned to attend City College this fall. A program coordinator for United Playaz — a “violence prevention and youth development organization” — has described Davis as “a good kid,” she said.
“Marquez has a lot of support in the community,” Wolf wrote. “[F]riends and relatives refer to him as “bright and motivated” and a “friendly, caring and considerate”, young man whose “mentors are all ready to encourage and assist him.”
Taken together it was perfectly possible for him to be released in a manner which did not pose a danger to the public, she said.
The court was earlier told that Davis was born and raised in San Francisco and that his father was killed when he was six months old.
“Detention is necessary to protect the public from Defendant, who has a demonstrated inability to follow firearms laws, and a demonstrated willingness to discharge illegal firearms in public spaces without regard for public safety.”
Assistant District Attorney Henry Gage III
At an earlier hearing prosecutors pressed the court to keep Davis in jail.
“The court has additionally been presented with clear and convincing evidence that Davis used a weapon on the streets of San Francisco to direct fire at a fleeing vehicle,” wrote assistant district attorney Henry Gage III in a motion.
“This behavior demonstrates escalating pattern of behavior and further demonstrated the clear public safety risk that Defendant Davis represents. Detention is necessary to protect the public from Defendant, who has a demonstrated inability to follow firearms laws, and a demonstrated willingness to discharge illegal firearms in public spaces without regard for public safety.”
Davis’ claims were made under the Racial Justice Act, a 2020 law which allows defendants to receive preferential treatment if they can show racial bias in arrests, prosecutions, convictions or sentencing.
Critics say the Act significantly impairs California’s ability to prosecute and punish violent criminals. They attack the “fiction” that disparities in arrest and incarceration rates are a result of anything other than actual differences in rates of crimes being committed.
In 2015 Judge Hill attracted criticism from some quarters for undue leniency when he sentenced a Santa Barbara man to one year in jail for assault and animal cruelty charges. This prompted the California Judges Association to rally to his defense and issue a statement in his support.
Davis has pleaded ‘not guilty’ to a battery of firearms offenses.
The case continues.
Hill stands accused of using “racially coded language”, though the code in question is so well-ciphered that not even a cryptographer could crack it.
The judge’s remarks — boilerplate concerns about releasing an obviously dangerous and volatile defendant, too rarely heard at the Hall of Justice — hardly warrant the public defender’s performative outrage.
That office will struggle to persuade observers that this is anything more than an artless attempt to intimidate a bench that is already too attentive to the needs of the city’s most precocious violent thugs and too ready to dismiss the right of San Franciscans not to be shot at in broad daylight.
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