Ex-D.A. Terence Hallinan suspended from practicing law

Former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan Former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan Photo: Ho Photo: Ho Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Ex-D.A. Terence Hallinan suspended from practicing law 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

In what may be the muted final chapter of a flamboyant legal career, former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan has agreed to be suspended from practicing law in California for 90 days for using a bank account he had designated for client funds as his personal account.

No clients’ money was actually in the account, and no clients were harmed, the State Bar’s disciplinary court said in a suspension order, made public Monday, that Hallinan also signed. But the court said his misconduct — commingling personal funds in a client trust account — was “willful” and was aggravated further when he failed to respond to letters from bar investigators in August and September.

The suspension will take effect when it is approved by the state Supreme Court. Hallinan will also be on probation for two years and must take an ethics course.

The Hallinan family has a long, colorful history in San Francisco. Hallinan’s father, Vincent, was a legendary criminal defense lawyer who crusaded against local court corruption and was regularly jailed for contempt of court, using one of his jail terms to run for president on the Progressive Party ticket in 1952.

Arrest record

Terence Hallinan also has a long arrest record, mostly for his participation in civil rights demonstrations as a teenager, and earned the nickname “Kayo” both for his accomplishments as an amateur boxer and occasional fisticuffs during his professional legal career. A defense lawyer whose clients included mass murderer Juan Corona, he was twice elected to the Board of Supervisors, then made the unlikely switch to district attorney with a narrow election victory in 1995, endorsing medical marijuana, de-emphasizing the prosecution of drug crimes and prostitution, and often clashing with the Police Department.

After a second narrow victory in 1999, Hallinan was defeated in 2003 by Kamala Harris, a career prosecutor who is now the state attorney general — and who continued Hallinan’s practice of refusing to seek the death penalty in San Francisco.

After his defeat, he went back into private law practice and has stayed largely out of public view.

According to the State Bar’s disciplinary order, Hallinan, 78, deposited $88,500 from his property management company, BallyHallinan Properties, into a Bank of America account he had designated for client trust funds between January and July 2013. Between Dec. 31, 2012, and March 2014, he withdrew more than $72,000 from the same account, through checks and electronic withdrawals, to pay personal expenses, the bar said.

Trust accounts

Lawyers establish trust accounts to hold funds for their clients, such as damages or settlements from a third party, or funds that the client has asked the lawyer to hold. State Bar rules prohibit them from mixing their own funds in the accounts even if those accounts hold no client money.

“When your personal money is in a trust account, it seriously jeopardizes client money,” said Los Angeles attorney Diane Karpman, an expert on legal ethics. Another reason for the prohibition, she said, is that lawyers might otherwise use trust accounts to hide their funds from tax collectors or an estranged spouse.

In this case, though, the commingling was inadvertent, said Hallinan’s son Brendan.

“He didn’t have his banking organized properly,” he said. “The auto-deposits went into his trust account, not his personal account. But he wasn’t spending his clients’ money.”

Brendan Hallinan said his father has since fixed the problem. He said Terence Hallinan, who now lives in Petaluma, has largely stopped practicing law but was not feeling well and did not want to comment.

Clients weren’t harmed

The bar, in its disciplinary order, agreed that “no clients were harmed by (Hallinan’s) misconduct, as (he) held no client funds in his trust while commingling.”

But the bar said the misconduct was aggravated by the multiple financial transactions — 117 in a single year — and by Hallinan’s failure to respond to the investigators’ letters.

In addition, the bar noted, Hallinan had been privately admonished by the bar in 2001. That was for remarks he made to The Chronicle, while district attorney, saying police suspected that the slaying of an Asian organized crime figure was linked to the unsolved killing of Hallinan’s former campaign finance manager, Dennis Natali.

Hallinan made his comments on the eve of a trial of four men accused of the 1996 killing of the gang figure. In response, the judge declared a mistrial and ordered the city to pay the defense’s legal costs.

The bar said a 90-day suspension, the standard penalty for the violation, is justified because Hallinan’s record of public service “does not outweigh (his) aggravating circumstances of a prior record of discipline and multiple acts of misconduct.”

Karpman said lawyers suspended for 90 days or more must notify all their clients and the courts in which they practice.

Jaxon Van Derbeken and

Bob Egelko are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com, begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jvanderbeken, @egelko