Porno King Receives 6-Year Term for Killing His Brother : Courts: The two were former owners of the Mitchell Brothers theater in Santa Ana, which the city spent 11 years trying to close.

San Francisco porno king Jim Mitchell was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for the shooting death last year of his brother and business partner, Artie Mitchell.

In issuing the sentence, Marin County Superior Court Judge Richard Breiner said Mitchell, who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and using a firearm in commission of a crime, acted with “criminal sophistication.” Breiner released Mitchell on $500,000 bail pending an appeal.

The judge had the option of imposing probation or a prison term ranging from six years to 11 years.

San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan and Sheriff Michael Hennessey were among 100 people who wrote letters urging compassion. Jordan wrote in an April 19 letter that rehabilitation would serve no good purpose and noted that Mitchell, 48, is responsible for raising 10 children--four of his own and six of Artie’s.

The brothers ran the O’Farrell Theater, a sex parlor in downtown San Francisco, and produced X-rated movies such as “Behind the Green Door.”

They also had owned the Mitchell Brothers theater in Santa Ana, which the city spent 11 years and $700,000 trying to close.

In 1987, after filing 47 lawsuits, the city gave up, letting the theater continue to show X-rated movies.

It then appeared that what the city had failed to do, a bank would. Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn., which owned the theater building, said it would not renew the theater’s lease when it expired. Charles H. Keating, then head of the bank and an anti-pornography crusader, filed a lawsuit of his own against the theater.

But the federal government later took over the bank after it failed, and the suits were dropped.

(Keating was sentenced earlier this month to 10 years in prison and fined $250,000 following his conviction on 17 counts of state securities fraud.)

The Mitchell Brothers closed the theater on June 30, 1990.