By Robert Haugh
The San Francisco Chronicle reported last Friday about new letters weighing in on the sentencing of indicted former Santa Clara City Council Vice Mayor Anthony Becker.
Becker should be sentenced this Friday, March 21, 2025. He was indicted in early December for leaking a Grand Jury report to the 49ers and then lying about it. Becker could be sentenced to up to four years in prison.
Retired judge and former San Francisco lawmaker Quentin Kopp demanded strict punishment, including prison time.
Kopp wrote that Becker was “a City Council member who in common parlance, was bought and paid for by a business which depends upon a stadium financed by the city taxpayers.”
In Kopp’s letter, according to the Chronicle, imposing jail time would send a “powerful message” against letting big-money interests sway public servants.
Dr. Tom Shanks, a past executive director of Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, echoed the call for a prison sentence.
“A light sentence will only perpetuate the public’s distrust of government institutions and foster the belief that power, money, and self-interest trump ethics every time,” wrote Shanks.
At the end of January, Stand Up for Santa Clara President Dana Caldwell wrote a letter to Judge Javier Alcala that was reprinted on Santa Clara News Online. Caldwell also suggested prison time for Becker.
Alcala presided over the much-delayed Becker trial last year. Alcala was scheduled to sentence Becker in January but conceded to the defense attorneys’ request for more delays.
Leading up to the trial, the Chronicle reported that the Becker team had initially planned a wide-ranging defense.
Subpoenas targeted 20 people including Mayor Lisa Gillmor, former City Council member Kathy Watanabe, Kopp, and this reporter. (Yup, yours truly).
But Becker’s defense team called no witnesses, suggesting the subpoenas were a way to harass individuals who were 49er critics.
Becker did not testify for himself.
Jurors took less than three hours to render a guilty verdict.
[…] 90 percent of residents want Becker to serve some time behind bars. And numerous prominent people have written to suggest that Becker deserves prison time. It looks like York is writing to counter their […]
[…] survey results and residents’ comments mirror the opinions of some prominent individuals who have written to Judge Javier Alcala asking for him to sentence Becker to […]