Case Against S.F. Lawyer Puts Profession on Trial : Court: Deciding how far to go in a client’s defense is tricky. Verdict may change the way attorneys do business.

Witnesses for the accused include a brother of a U.S. Supreme Court justice, a retired judge, a sheriff and prominent Bay Area lawyers. The prosecution side offers an assortment of marijuana smugglers, including a kingpin who has been allowed to live lavishly off drug proceeds he buried in a back yard.

This seemingly miscast courtroom drama has accomplished the nearly impossible, diverting some of the nation’s legal community away from the O.J. Simpson trial and into a Reno courtroom where one of San Francisco’s most respected lawyers faces possible life in prison for the way he defended his criminal clients.

Patrick Hallinan, 60, the son of a legendary trial lawyer, brother of a San Francisco elected official and bearer of a name revered by many San Franciscans, is accused of crossing the line between legal advocate and criminal by acting as house counsel to a $140-million marijuana ring. The case goes to the jury this week, and the outcome could alter the way defense lawyers everywhere go about their business.

“The scary thing is that a lot of the stuff Patrick has been charged with is stuff that all criminal defense lawyers do,” said Harold Rosenthal, a San Francisco defense lawyer who has been analyzing the trial for a lawyers’ computer network.

The criminal defense community has shuddered as a parade of smugglers, led by Hallinan’s former client, testified that the lawyer helped them hide drug money and advised the smugglers to deceive the government and flee from prosecution--in return for hefty cash payments.

Hallinan is also criminally charged with distorting the truth before a federal magistrate because he denied prosecution charges against his former client while representing him during a 1989 bail hearing.

Many criminal lawyers see the case as a trial of their profession, a test of whether the public, including the largely blue-collar jury here, can distinguish between representing criminals and being a criminal.

“It is this constant battle lawyers go through--how far do you go to defend your client? . . ,” said John Mendez, who was head of the federal prosecutors’ office in San Francisco under former President George Bush. “At what point do you cross the line?”

Criminal defense lawyers are obligated to defend the accused--even if they know they are guilty--zealously, but are not supposed to break the law in doing so. Federal prosecutors contend that Hallinan crossed the line by helping his former clients commit crimes, including laundering drug money.

The client, Ciro Mancuso, 46, ran the marijuana smuggling ring. He is a boyish-looking entrepreneur who, in addition to making millions in the marijuana business, also established himself as a successful developer of real estate in Lake Tahoe and Hawaii.

He was a Hallinan client for nearly two decades. The split came in 1990, when Mancuso, apparently unhappy about a plea bargain Hallinan helped negotiate, fired him and got a better deal from federal prosecutors by implicating the lawyer in his crimes.

In exchange for his testimony, Mancuso has been allowed to keep millions of dollars in assets the government could have seized and to travel with his family to Hawaii. He lives in a million-dollar spread with an indoor swimming pool near Lake Tahoe.

Like the other drug defendants who testified against Hallinan, Mancuso will not be sentenced until after the Hallinan trial.

The dramatic climax of the five-week-old trial came last week when Hallinan took the stand. He is one of San Francisco’s top trial lawyers, reputed particularly for his magic with juries and admired by both prosecutors and defense lawyers.

Initially nervous, the graying, curly-haired lawyer soon warmed to his subject, confiding to the rapt jury conversations with clients that most defense lawyers are obligated never to reveal.

He appeared less scripted than some of the prosecution witnesses and spoke congenially in a folksy manner, repeatedly mispronouncing Mercedes, a luxury car that figures in the case, and lacing his testimony with humor.

Hallinan comes from a wealthy San Francisco family that has long been associated with liberal causes. His father, Vincent, who was famed for his legal skills, once ran as a Liberal Party candidate for President.

With the courtroom filled with family members, including children, Hallinan testified that he was fooled by an artful, devious client who used everyone around him without remorse.

The lawyer denied that he advised Mancuso and his associates to lie to investigators or flee, and described his actions as consistent with the duties of a criminal defense lawyer.

Hallinan represented Mancuso during an Internal Revenue Service probe in the 1980s and in connection with Mancuso’s marijuana smuggling in the 1970s.

“Ciro Mancuso was one of the most exploitative psychopaths I have ever met in my life. . . .” said Hallinan. “He was a singular liar.” Dealing with Mancuso was “like falling into a pit of mud,” Hallinan said. “You could never get hold of anything to pull yourself out.”

Turning to the jury, Hallinan testified that he is not a drug lawyer, saying he specializes in defending white collar defendants, including a federal judge and former state schools chief Bill Honig. Drug cases, Hallinan said, are “the most boring” for a defense lawyer.

Hallinan, trying to show that he did not know he was helping Mancuso launder drug money, contended that Mancuso consistently told him he had abandoned the marijuana business in 1977, after a close brush with the law. Mancuso’s successful real estate business, Hallinan said, made the claim credible.

Mancuso has testified that Hallinan invented a phony director for an offshore corporation Mancuso used to hide drug money. Correspondence for the corporation was often mailed to Mancuso at Hallinan’s San Francisco law office.

In addition to handling these correspondences, Hallinan acknowledged that he sold Mancuso an art collection, hired him to build an addition for his home, arranged for him to purchase a house owned by Hallinan’s mother and even allowed Mancuso once to put his funds into Hallinan’s personal bank account. He also accepted a Mercedes convertible from his client.

Although Hallinan has offered innocent explanations for each of his actions, they would be considered sloppy or worse by today’s standards of criminal law practice, an invitation for government scrutiny.

The federal government began investigating criminal defense attorneys during the Ronald Reagan Administration in what many lawyers contend is a continuing campaign to intimidate them from zealously defending the accused.

The fear of prosecution has prompted lawyers today to be more cautious with their clients, and legal magazines continually counsel criminal lawyers to avoid personal dealings with their clients.

But the charges against Hallinan also stem from courtroom advocacy. During a bail hearing for Mancuso prior to their split, Hallinan told the federal magistrate that his client did not commit crimes with the other named defendants.

Hallinan, however, has admitted he knew at the time that Mancuso had received $1 million from one of the co-defendants for introducing him to a Thai marijuana source. Hallinan testified that his statement was not a misrepresentation because, among other things, it was possible that the $1-million introduction had not resulted in a crime.

John Keker, the former Iran-Contra special prosecutor who is defending Hallinan, asked if Hallinan should have told the judge that Mancuso had made the $1-million introduction.

Of course not, Hallinan testified. He could have been disbarred for doing that.

“My duty,” Hallinan told the jury, “is to fight like the dickens for my client.”

Hallinan seemed anguished when the prosecution displayed his confidential notes from meetings with Mancuso on a courtroom screen. One passage, the prosecutor said, showed that the lawyer had concocted a phony story for his client to explain an illegal transaction.

Communications between lawyer and client, like the confession of a sinner to a priest, are generally confidential and protected by law.

“I always thought that they were sacred and no one would ever get hold of them,” Hallinan said on the stand. “It frankly breaks my heart to see some of them exposed the way they are.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. L. Anthony White repeatedly implied that a lawyer of 30 years would have realized Mancuso was in the drug business. When Hallinan testified that the notes simply represented what Mancuso told him, White asked the lawyer why he had not insisted that his client explain the large sums of cash he paid for his goods.

Defense lawyers do not cross-examine their clients, Hallinan retorted, saying that is the job of prosecutors and law enforcement agents.

Hallinan sparred repeatedly with White, but also seemed to bend over backward to be cooperative. Keker once admonished his client to slow down as he responded to White’s questions, and at another stage told Hallinan to stop saying “we” when describing Mancuso’s actions as his client.

White and his criminal witnesses have not seemed much of a match for Hallinan’s lawyers and his character witnesses, who have included Charles Breyer, a San Francisco lawyer and brother of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey.

But legal analysts following the case contend that a jury might find it hard to believe that the federal government would give leniency to drug smugglers in exchange for testimony against an attorney--unless that lawyer were crooked.