SKIP TO CONTENTSKIP TO SITE INDEX

cle

Jurors Find San Francisco Homeless Man Not Guilty in Pipe Beating

The case was initially seen as an illustration of the city’s crime and homelessness woes. Further evidence challenged that narrative

Garret Doty at the Hall of Justice in May. His public defender argued that he struck Don Carmignani, a former city fire commissioner, in self-defense.Credit...Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle, via Polaris

By Jesse Barron

Dec. 23, 2023Updated 1:30 a.m. ET

A homeless man who beat a former San Francisco city official with a metal pipe was found not guilty of assault charges on Friday, capping a case that had drawn national attention as a symbol of the city’s crime and homelessness problems until a public defender unearthed a surprising back story.

The defendant, Garret Allen Doty, 25, faced as many as seven years in prison had he been found guilty of the charges that stemmed from an altercation in San Francisco’s wealthy Marina district. On the evening of April 5, police responded to a neighborhood resident, Don Carmignani, 54, who had a fractured skull and severe injuries to his face that required more than 100 stitches. Multiple witnesses identified Mr. Doty as the assailant, and police arrested him minutes later.

But the public defender in the case, Kleigh Hathaway, determined that Mr. Carmignani had sprayed a canister of what appeared to be bear mace before Mr. Doty attacked him. Ms. Hathaway surfaced eight unsolved cases in which pepper spray or bear mace had been used against homeless people in the neighborhood. It was enough, she felt, to argue that Mr. Doty had responded in self-defense.

Jurors ultimately agreed on Friday.

“This case shows us that the citizens of San Francisco can still tell the difference between right and wrong,” Ms. Hathaway said afterward in an iT

SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe San Francisco District Attorney’s Office said that it respected the In April, Mr. Doty had recently moved to San Francisco from Louisiana and was living in a tent on the sidewalk near an apartment owned by Mr. Carmignani’s parents. After the attack, he was arrested and was charged with three felonies: assault with a deadly weapon, assault with force likely to produce grave bodily injury and battery causing serious bodily injury