Fingers crossed today will be the last day DA Chesa Boudin is in office. Meanwhile, a writer named Susan Dyer Reynolds has uncovered a remarkable story which Boudin’s office is trying to conceal. It started in September 2019 when a 35-year-old homeless man named James McGee was seen chasing a 62-year-old cab driver named Arif Mohammed Qasim with a metal pipe.

According court documents, an off-duty police officer driving in the area initially saw McGee chasing Qasim with what appeared to be a metal pipe in his hand. The officer then made a U-turn with their vehicle and, after hearing loud thwack noises, the officer allegedly saw McGee fleeing the scene…

Officers soon located Qasim lying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood with what appeared to be massive blunt force trauma injuries to his head and face. Officers also found blood spattered on a nearby wall and “a white piece of matter that appears to have been from either the brain or skull” of Qasim, prosecutors said…

McGee had what appeared to be fresh blood on his clothes and when officers asked him about it, he allegedly said the blood had transferred on his clothes after walking past Qasim.

The attack was caught on video and the judge agrees this can be charged as a murder and because of the sustained violence no bail will be set for McGee.

Assistant District Attorney David Ezgar points out that the officer heard repeated metal slamming and so did the 911 caller. “So the video is corroborated in terms of the number of strikes or blows that you see in that video against the victim who, the entire time, is laying on his back face up. And the coroner adds to this by saying, there were approximately 15 fractures in this man’s skull, teeth are on the ground, brains on the ground, teeth lodged into his brain,” Ezgar says. “The photo we’ve submitted shows that literally his face was beaten in to the point where he could not be recognized. Since the victim posed no threat to the defendant and since this occurred with repeated blows and since time is not an essential requirement to form an intent to kill for it to be deliberate and for it to be premeditated, we would submit that there is sufficient evidence for both a first degree and second degree holding.”

One year later, a Deputy DA reaches an agreement with the public defender to instead charge the case as involuntary manslaughter because video shows Qasim initiated the confrontation.

[Public Defender] Tong, still representing McGee, and assistant DA Asha Jameson, now representing the People (in her first murder case), agree that McGee will enter a no contest plea to the charge of violating PC 192(b) — involuntary manslaughter, which says a person unintentionally killed another resulting from criminal negligence. Involuntary manslaughter requires no intent to kill or harm another, but still makes it a crime “when the killing was an accident.”

In perhaps the most bizarre part of the transcript, Jameson sounds as if she’s reading a disclaimer from Boudin. “Mr. McGee was originally charged with a 187(a) … After review of the video and after speaking to the victim’s family, the video shows the victim retrieving a long mental object and pursuing Mr. McGee up the street,” Jameson says. “It shows the victim confronting Mr. McGee with that pipe and engaging and initiating an altercation and using that pipe to hit Mr. McGee on the side of the head first. And in light of what’s shown on the video and in light of the cocaine in the victim’s system, we’ve offered the 192.

The Deputy DA who initially charged the case was one of the people fired by DA Boudin as soon as he took office. He said of the reduced charges, “Had I still been the managing attorney of the homicide unit, I would have never agreed to the plea.” Another attorney quoted in the story noted that McGee was allowed to plead “no contest” to the charges. He didn’t even have to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter. When sentencing took place in December 2020, just 15 months after McGee bludgeoned Qasim to death in the street, he was released on time served:

[Judge] Conroy then turns to McGee. “You’ll be sentenced pursuant to 1170(h), that is, it will be a split sentence. On that four-year sentence, you’ll serve actual time in custody of 466 days, of good time credits of 466 days, for a total of 932 days. The balance is to be served on mandatory supervision … You’ll be released today.”

And that’s not quite the end of the story. On May 20 of this year a group called Stop Crime SF requested a copy of the video of the murder, asking that it be provided immediately. Three days later the DAs office said it would need “additional time to respond to this request” and noting that it had at least 14 days to respond. As of yesterday, it still hadn’t managed to turn up the video. No doubt that video surfacing just prior to today’s recall vote wouldn’t have helped Chesa Boudin’s case that he’s tough on violent crime.