Prominent East Bay defense lawyer Lorna Brown should be suspended from practicing law for four years — but not permanently disbarred — for smuggling from jail an alleged hit list of witnesses in the Chauncey Bailey murder case, a state Bar Court judge recommended Monday.

Brown “willfully ignored her duties as an attorney, as well as the health and safety of witnesses who planned to testify” against her former client, Yusuf Bey IV, who was eventually convicted of ordering the 2007 murder of the Oakland journalist, Judge Pat McElroy wrote in a 16-page decision.

But Brown eventually admitted what she did and expressed remorse, McElroy wrote, “and her recognition of wrongdoing assures the court her misconduct is unlikely to reoccur.”

Brown had asked for a two-year suspension at a two-day trial before McElroy in April. The state Bar of California had sought her permanent disbarment.

It will be up to the California Supreme Court to make final McElroy’s recommendation. Last year, it rejected a two-year suspension brokered in a plea bargain Brown reached with the State Bar, setting up the bench trail before McElroy.

Brown, 67, of Berkeley, can begin applying for reinstatement of her law license in two years, a process that includes taking ethics classes and paying the cost of her prosecution, the judge wrote. She could not be reached for comment. Her attorney, Vickie Young, did not return a phone call Monday afternoon. The State Bar’s spokeswoman said it did not have an immediate comment on the recommended discipline. It was unclear when the Supreme Court will take final action,.

Brown’s saga began in March 2010 when she took what she claimed she thought was a love letter Bey IV wrote to his girlfriend out of Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail in Dublin without showing it to guards. Attorneys are allowed only to take legal papers in and out of jails.

That letter turned out to be what prosecutors alleged were orders to one of Bey IV’s followers, Gary Popoff, to intimidate or kill witnesses in Bey’s upcoming trial on charges he ordered the killing of Bailey, the Oakland Post editor who was writing a story on the bankruptcy case of Bey IV’s Your Black Muslim Bakery.

Bey IV was eventually convicted of Bailey’s murder and those of two other men, Odell Roberson and Michael Wills, and sentenced to life in prison with no chance at parole. He has appealed.

Brown eventually admitted giving the letter and some other papers on which Bey IV had written notes to a member of the Bey family she met on an Oakland street corner.

Hours later, District Attorney’s inspectors, acting on a tip that Popoff was headed to kill witnesses, found the documents in a car he was driving and arrested him. He was jailed on a parole violation. Bey IV was not charged in the plot, Brown at first denied any wrongdoing, but eventually admitted smuggling the papers past guards and passing them off. She denied knowing of a plot to intimidate or kill anyone, and testified in April that she believed Popoff was helping her find witnesses so she could interview them.

Rather than charge Brown with a crime, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley cut a deal with her. If the lawyer retired, she wouldn’t be charged. But after the one-year statute of limitations to charge her expired, Brown began representing clients again, and O’Malley took the case to the State Bar.

After the Supreme Court rejected Brown’s plea deal, bar prosecutors sought her disbarment, claiming her actions attacked the core of the justice system by making it more difficult to get people to testify against criminal defendants.

Brown said on the stand that her actions were “stupid” and that she regretted them deeply.

“I am pleased that the State Bar court has held Ms. Brown accountable for her actions,” O’Malley said in an email Monday through a spokeswoman.

Contact Thomas Peele at tpeele@bayareanewsgroup.com and follow him twitter.com/thomas_peele