The eval is dangerous - you shouldn't execute user input.
If you have 2.6 or newer, use ast instead of eval:
>>> import ast
>>> ast.literal_eval('["A","B" ,"C" ," D"]')
["A", "B", "C", " D"]
Once you have that, strip the strings.
If you're on an older version of Python, you can get very close to what you want with a simple regular expression:
>>> x='[ "A", " B", "C","D "]'
>>> re.findall(r'"\s*([^"]*?)\s*"', x)
['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']
This isn't as good as the ast solution, for example it doesn't correctly handle escaped quotes in strings. But it's simple, doesn't involve a dangerous eval, and might be good enough for your purpose if you're on an older Python without ast.