For nearly a decade, San Francisco filmmaker and journalist Kevin Epps has lived under the shadow of a prosecution that never should have happened.
In 2016, a violent intruder and registered sex offender under the influence of methamphetamine barged unlawfully into Kevin’s home where he lived with his partner and two young children. Fearing for his life and the safety of his family, Kevin defended himself. He shot the intruder, who died from the gunshot wound. He did not flee the scene. He told officers immediately what happened. Prosecutors reviewed the facts and declined to file charges — fully consistent with California’s Castle Doctrine which presumes the right to self-defense in one’s home is exercised out of fear of death or great bodily injury.
That should have been the end of it.
But three years later, the case was suddenly revived, not because of new facts, not because Kevin posed any danger to the public, but because of controversial 3D animations created by a contractor whose work has been discredited in courts across the country. Those same animations have now been ruled inadmissible and thrown out in Kevin’s trial, yet the charges they triggered are still being pursued. Meanwhile, the key witnesses for the prosecution are contradicting statements they made nine years ago!
Kevin Epps is not only a father and San Francisco native — he is an award-winning Black filmmaker, director of Straight Outta Hunters Point, journalist and Executive Editor of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, mentor to young writers and artists, and a well-known community leader. He has spent decades telling the stories of San Francisco’s neighborhoods, uplifting young people, and holding civic institutions accountable. He has lived under threat of prosecution for nine years, and now stands trial, despite acting exactly as the law presumes any reasonable person would.
This prosecution does not reflect justice, fairness, or equal protection of the law. It reflects a double standard. Self-defense must apply to everyone — or it means nothing.
We call on District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to drop the charges immediately — end this decade-long ordeal and wrongful prosecution!
