S.F. Voters Elect Liberal Activist as District Attorney : Politics: Terence Hallinan vows to soften tone of law enforcement. City prosecutors say they’re nervous.

Terence Hallinan, the son of a famously liberal legal family who had to fight to get a law license because of his police record--and who went on to defend mass murderer Juan Corona and heiress Patricia Hearst--awoke Wednesday as the next district attorney of San Francisco.

Hallinan, an elected San Francisco supervisor whose nickname is Kayo, defeated a longtime prosecutor in Tuesday’s election and promptly vowed to soften the tone of law enforcement in this city.

“Make no mistake,” the gray-haired, bespectacled 59-year-old said at a news conference Wednesday. “The voters have laid out a mandate for change. They have elected a progressive district attorney, and that’s what they will get.”

On the same day they elected former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown as mayor, San Franciscans chose as their top prosecutor a liberal activist who promises to enforce “three strikes” cases cautiously and selectively, opposes capital punishment and believes that prostitutes and minor drug users should not be jailed.

“San Francisco is a refugee city for liberals,” said San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Brown, “and the vote for Willie Brown and Kayo Hallinan reflects the fact that liberals want to fight back.”

Police, career prosecutors and the city’s two largest newspapers had favored Bill Fazio, a former deputy district attorney, and the election left many in law enforcement apprehensive. Some career prosecutors are expected to leave the office rather than work for Hallinan, and others fear that they may lose their jobs.

“We’re nervous,” said a deputy district attorney who showed up to hear Hallinan’s remarks Wednesday afternoon.

When he moves to the prosecutor’s office in January, Hallinan is expected to take a harder look at misconduct by police, expand prosecution of landlords for infractions against tenants and file cases under the tough “three strikes” sentencing law only for violent offenses such as rape and murder.

The Hallinans have been called “San Francisco’s Kennedys.” Beloved by liberals and San Francisco’s large Irish community, the family has nevertheless seemed to court controversy and confrontation.

The family patriarch, Vincent Hallinan, was a famed leftist defense lawyer and onetime Progressive Party presidential candidate who was jailed repeatedly for contempt of court. Terence’s older brother, Patrick, also a criminal defense lawyer here, was acquitted in March on federal charges that he helped a former client maintain a marijuana smuggling operation. Terence, at times in tears, attended his brother’s trial in Nevada and spoke on his behalf to reporters.

The newly elected district attorney, a former civil rights and anti-war activist, had to fight to obtain his license to practice law decades ago because of run-ins with police as a young man. He was made a ward of Marin County Juvenile Court at 17 after pleading guilty to charges of petty theft and battery stemming from a brawl.

Hallinan was charged with felony assault when he was 22 but acquitted after the jury deadlocked. The state bar tried to prevent him from obtaining his legal license on character grounds, but he appealed the decision and won.

As a criminal defense lawyer, Hallinan represented farm laborer Corona in his murder trial and, briefly, Hearst before her family hired F. Lee Bailey to defend her on robbery charges.

Hallinan later turned to civil law, handling personal injury cases, and stopped practicing law when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1988.

Public Defender Brown described Hallinan as a “brawler” in court, a defense lawyer “who would go in there after the other side with a kind of baseball bat approach.” He predicted that Hallinan is likely to get into “a beef” with the statewide association of district attorneys.

“They are a pretty uptight group of people,” said Brown, howling with laughter. “They are not his sort of people.”

Hallinan, however, said he expects to work well with the state’s other prosecutors. “I won’t have any problem with those people,” he said with a small smile. “I’m a lawyer.”

In recent years Hallinan’s political life has been troubled by scandal. A former aide in his supervisor’s office filed a wrongful termination suit against him and accused him of sexual harassment. He denied the charges and settled the suit outside court earlier this year.

Hallinan also challenged a paternity suit brought in the 1980s by a former client, but he eventually agreed to pay child support. Hallinan, who is divorced from his first wife, married a second time and is the father of five children.

During the campaign for district attorney, police and prosecution sources told San Francisco newspapers that Hallinan had intervened to get a strong-arm robbery charge dropped against his then-18-year-old son in 1993. Hallinan and Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith, who was defeated in the general election before Tuesday’s runoff, denied the report.

Seated at a conference table in the district attorney’s office Wednesday, Hallinan said his critics should relax because he does not intend any “radical” change. But alluding to his desire to increase police discipline, he added, “I’m not entirely upset that the police are nervous.”

He said his office may seek the death penalty on occasion although “I am not a person who is anxious to ask for the death penalty.” He said he will concentrate most on violent crime and assign deputy district attorneys to each of the city’s neighborhoods to work on crime prevention.

“People get their hackles up about me,” he said later in a short interview, “and then they listen to me and they say, ‘This guy isn’t such a nut.’ ”

While the two main newspapers, the Chronicle and the Examiner, had endorsed Fazio, many of the city’s smaller and more liberal newspapers, as well as unions and the Democratic clubs, supported Hallinan.