Gov. Newsom Appoints Foe of Santa Barbara’s Gang Injunction to Bench

Stephen Dunkle, a criminal defense attorney who handles high-profile cases with a low-key, professional demeanor, was just appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to fill one of the many vacancies on Santa Barbara’s increasingly elderly bench. 

Dunkle, who was admitted to the bar 20 years ago after having attended USC law school, has been a partner in the well-known criminal defense firm of Sanger Dunkle Law. In that time, Dunkle has defended some Santa Maria members of the street gang MS-13 in one of the largest — i.e., most defendants — murder prosecutions in county history, a well-known winemaker accused of embezzling his employer to the tune of $1.6 million, fiduciaries accused of bilking their senior client, and a host of clients in hot water with the law. 

When former Police Chief Cam Sanchez, backed by then-mayor Helene Schneider and the City Council, sought to impose a sweeping gang injunction in 2011, Dunkle was a key player among the cadre of criminal defense and civil rights attorneys who emerged to challenge the injunction. Not given to courtroom histrionics or impassioned orations about the discriminatory impact such an injunction would have on Latino youth, Dunkle fought — successfully — to exclude information gleaned from the juvenile to make the case that those named in the proposed injunction constituted the “worst of the worst,” of Santa Barbara’s gang element, as police gang expert witnesses alleged. (Except in rare circumstances, the confidentiality of juvenile records are regarded as legally sacrosanct.) Ultimately, Judge Colleen Sterne would rule City Hall had failed to make a compelling enough case and threw out the proposed gang injunction in its totality 2014.