Peter Keane, rabble-rousing S.F. attorney and winner of great governing administration, dies at 79
Peter Keane’s 1st shopper was himself.
He arrived in San Francisco from Dallas in a Volkswagen Squareback weighed down by his legislation textbooks and attempted to sign up to vote. He was denied on account of a just one-yr residency necessity in California in location at the time, and he’d been a resident for only 11 months.
So he sued the point out and attempted the circumstance, even before he was a registered California lawyer.
“State Voting Residency Legislation Voided,” browse the headline in The Chronicle on Oct. 8, 1970, with the names of plaintiffs Peter and Nancy Keane, his spouse, on the front page. It was the nucleus of a reputation that would come to depict the suitable to a fantastic federal government and a reasonable trial in San Francisco.
With a dashing Irish demeanor and a aptitude for courtroom dramatics, Keane would serve as a public defender, law enforcement commissioner, ethics commissioner, city and condition bar officer, voter initiative author, Television set murder trial analyst, legislation professor and law college dean.
Keane experienced retired when he was diagnosed with metastatic colon most cancers in February. He died at initially mild on Easter Sunday at his longtime home in the Richmond District, with his spouse of 53 decades and two daughters at his bedside. He was 79.
“Peter carried a duplicate of the Constitution in his pocket almost everywhere,” his spouse claimed. “It was not just consumers, or college students. He’d cease and discuss about the Constitution with individuals in the grocery retail outlet or whilst strolling on Clement Avenue. But he never did it in a way that would put anybody down. If someone posed a concern, he’d say, ‘Let’s search it up together.’ He just liked individuals.”
This provided individuals who ended up dealing with heinous crimes with demise penalty implications. Keane gave his consumers a vigorous defense and was typically a final and only close friend to quite a few of them. He spent terrific quantities of time in keeping cells at San Francisco County Jail and in visitation regions at San Quentin, Santa Rita, Folsom and Atascadero prisons, and normally arrived in a go well with and tie.
“Peter Keane was the model community servant,” claimed former Mayor Artwork Agnos. “He had integrity, he had commitment, and he had compassion for men and women who have been helpless in the facial area of the enormity that contains legislation enforcement in our region. He evened the odds.”
Peter Gerald Keane was born Feb. 8, 1943, in an Irish tenement in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., the youngest of 7 little ones. His father, John Martin Keane, was a longshoreman who worked the New York Metropolis docks, and his mother, Mae Veronica Neville Keane, labored in the cafeteria at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard.
This left the young ones to expand up largely on their personal. Keane’s to start with solo subway trip was at age 6, driving to his job at a corset shop. By age 8, he was offering groceries for strategies on his bicycle, even in the snow.
He was always a voracious reader, using the subway to the general public library, wherever he could at last find sufficient peace and peaceful to read. He handed the test for Brooklyn Complex Superior Faculty, graduating in 1961, although performing the docks with his father. He saved his longshoreman’s task straight by way of his graduation at City Faculty of New York in 1965.
“He understood all the union songs,” his spouse reported. “He generally reported, ‘Keanes do not cross picket lines.’”
The first time Keane left New York Town for more than a several days was to claim a whole educational scholarship to go to legislation school at Southern Methodist College in Dallas. Also at SMU regulation university was Nancy Ellsworth of Oklahoma Metropolis, who noticed him as the only kid without having a driver’s license. He was also the only student in a weighty overcoat, which also had a distinctive button for just about every gap, which he’d sewn on himself.
“The very first time I realized we ended up seriously collectively is when I sewed on the following button,” Nancy said. “Peter really stood out for not dressing in a preppy way, and the jacket showed self-assurance in a sea of people who were being not like him.”
Keane was an officer in pupil government and recruited Ellsworth to run for treasurer. She lost the election, but three months afterwards they had been engaged. Keane graduated in 1968 and dropped his university student deferment for navy provider. He was drafted by the Military and got a professional medical deferment on account of remaining a lifelong sleepwalker.
They ended up married in September 1968. Keane’s 1st large-profile legal shopper was the Vietnam Moratorium Committee of Dallas, which had been lawfully prevented from looking through in entrance of a Dallas courthouse the names of 2,200 Texans killed in the war. Keane missing that circumstance but gained a popularity as rabble-rouser. It was a distinction he embraced — until finally he was tipped off that he was about to be established up for a drug bust with marijuana planted in his possession by law enforcement.
That was the catalyst that drove them to California. “We understood completely no a single in San Francisco,” Nancy said, “but we resolved if were the two likely to be unemployed and broke, we may well as perfectly do it in San Francisco.”
They acquired an apartment in the Richmond and never left the community.
Following his victory in the voter registration scenario, which he won on charm, Keane entered private practice and rented a $90 place of work that came with with a pool secretary, furniture and place of work vegetation in the Jack Tar Resort.
“He was so fearful that he would not be ready to pay back the lease,” Nancy claimed. “He’d say, ‘How am I going to make $90 a month?’” His most responsible clients have been the producers of pornographic films accused of violating obscenity laws.
Keane insisted on having these conditions to demo, exactly where his courtroom tactic was to involve judges and juries to sit via all the films at issue, dozens of them a single immediately after the other in Metropolis Corridor courtrooms that were being open to the public.
In 1979, Public Defender Jeff Brown appointed Keane as San Francisco’s chief assistant community defender, foremost an business of 70 attorneys. Keane remained there for 19 years, the longest tenure of any assistant in office historical past, in accordance to Matt Gonzalez, who now retains Keane’s old work as chief lawyer.
In court docket, Keane had excellent timing and was an engaging storyteller, mentioned Gonzalez, who made use of to occur just to check out him.
“When he talked to jurors, it was like he was sitting down and owning a cup of espresso with them,” Gonzalez mentioned. “He listened to what they experienced to say. Peter was a master at jury variety.”
The O.J. Simpson murder demo, as Television set spectacle, presented Keane the probability to distribute his participating type outside of the courtroom. All the stations sought him out for pro commentary, and KPIX presented him an unique deal to be on the eyewitness information 5 nights a week, together with KPIX-FM radio, to inveigh on the trial.
“He was calculated, he was very careful, he was analytical and he under no circumstances enable his own thoughts area,” claimed Harry Fuller, who employed him at KPIX. “He wasn’t a performer in the way that a lot of anchors are. He was so naturally sincere in what he was indicating that he was fantastic at it.”
Keane could hold an viewers. For years he taught criminal process, constitutional law and lawful ethics at UC Hastings University of the Law. At the conclusion of the time period he would individually read through, quality and write comments in the margins for the final tests of up to 250 learners.
Keane also taught at Golden Gate University College of Law, where by he served a phrase as dean. In the two careers, he was obtainable. Everyone could knock on the door if it was shut, which it ordinarily wasn’t.
“One of the items I most admired about Peter is that he supported all college students,” claimed Rachel Van Cleave, also a school member and former dean at Golden Gate. “He was definitely a winner of underdogs, and Golden Gate is that form of regulation faculty. He was not concerned at all to acquire a stand.”
Although serving on the San Francisco Ethics Fee from 2013 to 2018, Keane took a stand for marketing campaign finance reform. As chair he pushed the commission to set a evaluate on the ballot to present much more transparency into political donations. It essential 4 votes to go and received only a few. When it was voted down he declared, “The vote fails. I resign,” snapped his briefcase shut and walked out of the conference.
But Keane did not give up on his determination to thoroughly clean up Metropolis Hall, and it ended up before the voters in 2019, when he chaired the committee for Proposition F, the “Sunlight on Darkish Money” initiative to involve the disclosure of who precisely was paying out for Tv set adverts in political strategies. It overwhelmingly passed, many thanks largely to Keane, who attended group meetings on its behalf almost every single night.
“Peter still left the city better than he observed it, that’s for absolutely sure,” explained Larry Bush, vice chair of the ethics fee.
When Keane’s illness turned terminal, his spouse explained to the neighborhood letter provider, Phat. The carrier sat down on the entrance ways and cried. That was all the appreciation he required.
“When I asked Peter how he needed to be remembered, he stated ‘as a great man,’” Nancy claimed. “He normally considered that was the optimum tribute.”
A household memorial company is personal. Donations in his memory might be manufactured to the American Clinicians Academy on Professional medical Assist in Dying, 2819 Piedmont Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 and the ACLU Foundation, 9450 S.W. Gemini Travel, PMB 62825, Beaverton, OR 97008-7105.
Survivors involve his spouse, Nancy Ellsworth Keane, and daughters, Lauren Keane and Heather Keane Leonard, all of San Francisco sister, Anne Anderson of Timonium, Md. and 5 grandchildren.
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle team author. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @samwhitingsf
