Davey D speaks with filmmaker, journalist, and community leader Kevin Epps, known for documentaries like Straight Outta Hunters Point and his work with the SF Bay View. Davey reminds listeners that years ago Epps was involved in a fatal shooting inside his home that was widely understood as self defense. Then–DA George Gascón declined to bring charges in 2016, and many in the community believed the matter was settled.
Attorney and longtime friend Julian Davis joins to explain how the case has resurfaced and why Epps is now on trial for murder nearly a decade later. Davis stresses Kevin’s long record of service, mentorship, and storytelling for Black San Francisco, framing him as someone who consciously chose community work over street life. He lays out how, despite the original self-defense finding and the application of California’s “castle doctrine,” the DA’s office later revived the case in 2019 without new evidence.
Instead, Davis says, the prosecution leaned on controversial 3D forensic animations created by the same contractor who produced misleading visuals in the Laquan McDonald police shooting case. Those animations in Epps’s case have since been ruled inadmissible at trial, but they were still used to justify bringing charges. Davis argues this points to selective prosecution and a reluctance to accept that a Black man from Bayview-Hunters Point acted in legitimate self-defense.
He also details the political shifts inside the DA’s office: the role of an aggressive ADA who pushed the case in Gascón’s final days, his firing under progressive DA Chesa Boudin, and the current law-and-order climate under DA Brooke Jenkins. Davis connects this to broader backlash against progressive prosecutors and a pattern of going hard on Black defendants while showing leniency to police.
Inside the courtroom, Davis flags two major concerns: a judge with little criminal background who tends to favor the prosecution, and a key witness whose story has repeatedly changed over nine years, including her portrayal of the deceased as suddenly “calm and peaceful.” Despite troubling rulings and excluded evidence about the intruder’s violent past, Davis believes the core facts still clearly support self-defense.
The segment closes with a call to action: pack the courtroom for closing arguments, sign statements and petitions at JusticeForKevinEpps.org, and pressure DA Jenkins to drop what Davis characterizes as a profound miscarriage of justice.
Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson.