SAN FRANCISCO – A former defense attorney suspended from her practice since 2014 for smuggling out of jail what prosecutors called a hit list of witnesses in a sensational Bay Area murder case isn’t getting her law license back.
Lorna P. Brown was defending Yusuf Bey IV, the leader of the now-defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland, in 2010 for the brazen, daylight murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey when she took papers out of the the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin on which Bey had written instructions about witnesses prosecutors believed he wanted killed.
She also brought out a sealed envelope that contained instructions to destroy evidence in the case. Brown has claimed that she thought it contained a love note Bey penned to the mother of his children.
Brown has admitted she passed the papers to a member of the Bey family during a street-corner hand off, but that she had no knowledge that her client was plotting murders. Bey, she said, played her.
State Bar Court Judge Manjari Chawla rejected Brown’s attempt to be reinstated as a practicing lawyer, writing in a decision that Brown seems more concerned with how the suspension impacted her than showing contrition that her actions could have gotten people killed.
“She appeared more concerned with how her misconduct has changed her life, rather than how her misconduct affected the safety of witnesses in a criminal trial or the administration of justice,” Judge Chawla wrote in a 13-page decision dated Nov. 1.
The murder on Aug. 2, 2007 shocked Oakland. Bailey was a well-known journalist who had worked for the Oakland Tribune before becoming the editor of the Oakland Post. He was gunned down at 14th and Alice streets as he walked to work.
Brown had claimed in a lengthy deposition that she became deeply depressed after the suspension, was afraid at times to leave her home and that she suffered post traumatic stress syndrome from the ordeal.
Her original four-year suspension did not come with automatic reinstatement. Rather, it allowed her to apply to get her license back , a process she began over the summer. It was aggressively opposed by the state bar, which argued Brown has never taken enough responsibility for the plot.
Her lawyer did not immediately respond to a message Tuesday. Brown can appeal Chawla’s decision to the Review Department of State Bar Court, a spokeswoman for the Bar said. Or Brown can make another motion for reinstatement after six months.
Thanks to a tip, inspectors in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office found the transcripts in a car being driven by Gary Popoff, a long time bakery associate who has described himself as Bey’s “Number One soldier.” No one was hurt.
Popoff was arrested on a parole violation. Brown never faced criminal charges. Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley has said she believed that Brown losing her law license was sufficient punishment and cooperated with the State Bar investigation.
In addition to criticizing Brown for focusing on her own plight, Chawla also wrote she was troubled that Brown — while suspended — continued to identify herself as an “attorney at law” on state bar web listings that lawyers are required to keep updated.
“An attorney on suspension is barred not only from practicing law but also from holding herself out as entitled to practice law during the suspension period,” the judge wrote. “Both express and implied representations of ability to practice are prohibited.
After the plot unraveled, Bey was forced to switch lawyers. The trigger man in Bailey’s death, bakery worker Devaundre Broussard, made a plea deal and testified that Bey ordered the killing of Bailey over a story the journalist was writing.
Bey was eventually convicted in 2011 and sentenced to life in state prison without the possibility of parole.
Among the notes Bey had written on the papers Brown brought out of jail was mention of the Bay View-Hunter’s Point neighborhood in San Francisco where Broussard is from, with the words “that’s where his people stay at.”
