Former San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew, who resigned his seat amidst scandal and was convicted in 2009 of perjury and extortion charges, will be back in San Francisco Superior Court Friday seeking a change to his sentence, according to prosecutors.
Jew’s defense attorneys have filed a motion seeking to keep him out of county jail by modifying a one-year jail sentence so that it can be served concurrently with a federal prison sentence, according to Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. Currently, the two sentences are consecutive, meaning they are to be served separately, one after the other.
Jew, who with his family owned a flower shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown, was elected to represent the Sunset District in November of 2006. He was suspended from office by Mayor Gavin Newsom in September 2007 and resigned in January 2008.
Jew was sentenced to five years and four months in federal prison after pleading guilty in October of 2008 to three counts of mail fraud, extortion and bribery for seeking to extort $80,000 from small businesses that were seeking city permits.
The FBI found $10,000 of the cash in marked bills wrapped in foil in a search of a home Jew owned in Burlingame.
That search, and a search of Jew’s apparently empty Sunset District home in San Francisco, raised questions about where Jew actually lived.
He pleaded guilty in November of 2009 in San Francisco Superior Court to a separate charge of lying about his residence when he ran for office in San Francisco, after officials determined he actually lived in Burlingame.
He was sentenced to three years probation and one year in county jail in connection with that charge.
Jew is scheduled to appear in court Friday at 1:30 p.m. in Department 25, Bastian said.
Stuart Hanlon, the defense attorney who has previously represented Jew, could not be reached for comment this evening.
Sara Gaiser, Bay City News
