San Diego Criminal Justice Memorial
Honorees
A memorial directory honoring deceased judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys who advanced criminal justice in San Diego County.
Jack Hochman
1950-2013
Jack Hochman completed his law degree at San Francisco Law School in 1976 and interned with the Public Defender in San Francisco, the beginning of his lifelong love of indigent criminal defense. He maintained a private practice in San Francisco for more than a decade before moving to San Diego in 1986. He began full time criminal defense practice with Defenders, Inc. and he became one of the first attorneys hired for the newly formed San Diego County Public Defender’s Office in 1988, where he remained until his retirement in 2011.
“Jack was a Public Defender in heart and soul, with passion and dedication to the indigent client that was unparalleled,” said Henry C. Coker, head Public Defender for San Diego County. “He was a humanitarian and had the innate ability to touch the hearts of his listeners and to sway the minds of those he encountered. The number of lives he affected is immeasurable, and our community has lost a tremendous individual.”
His wife of 25 years, Kay L. Sunday, also a criminal defense attorney in San Diego, said “Jack was passionate about his work, especially trial work, and was never happier than when in trial. He was considered a lawyer’s lawyer, a formidable opponent and he mentored many young lawyers, something he very much enjoyed and which was very important to him. He represented four people charged with the death penalty during his career, none of whom are on death row today, as a result of his zealous work on their behalf.”
Jack had many outright ‘Not Guilty’ verdicts, an amazing percentage of them on life top cases. To Rebecca Jones, a colleague, his most impressive results were the verdicts he obtained in murder cases. He seemed to excel in obtaining manslaughter verdicts. On one capital case, he convinced a judge to preclude death altogether, for a speedy trial/ due process violation. Jack lived the mantra that avoiding penalty phase altogether is always best.
Jack battled tirelessly in the ’90s for reforms in the application of the “Three Strikes” law and argued successfully on behalf of a client whose third strike – stealing a can of beer – would have put the 18-year-old behind bars for life. He wrote the first Public Defender motion challenging three strikes. It became an accepted part of the Public Defender practice to file Jack’s motion in any non-homicide life case.
In 2007, Jack received the Trial Attorney of the Year Award from the Board of Directors of the San Diego Criminal Defense Bar Association, an organization of which he had been president from 1999 to 2000.
He was considered to be an outstanding trial attorney and outstanding mentor to younger attorneys in his office. Many experienced attorneys within the criminal defense community praised him as extraordinarily passionate about criminal defense and compassionate for his clients.