State Bar: Bey Lawyer Should Lose License for Smuggling Papers

A Berkeley lawyer endangered public protection by smuggling witness documents out of a triple-murder defendant's jail cell in 2010 and should forfeit her license to practice law, an Alameda County District Attorney's investigator said at a disbarment trial Tuesday. 

"People were reluctant to testify" after it was revealed that defense attorney Lorna Brown had smuggled the papers, district attorney's Inspector Mike Foster told State Bar Court Judge Patrice McElroy in San Francisco.

"They get very nervous about their safety," Foster testified. "There's a perception that if you're out there and you come in to help prosecutors or police, you're subject to being dealt with on the street."

Brown, 67, formerly represented Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV. Bey was convicted in 2011 of three counts of murder for ordering the executions of investigative journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other men in Oakland in 2007. The 27-year-old Oakland man was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison.

With an active practice on Miller Avenue, Brown joined the State Bar in 1988.

The State Bar Association is seeking to disbar Brown because she took documents out of Bey's Santa Rita Jail cell in Dublin on March 8, 2010, and lied about it to investigators in an initial interview on April 13, 2010. The documents smuggled by Brown in two sealed envelopes included a witness list; transcriptions of three witness statements with handwritten notes allegedly written by Bey; and a sealed letter to Bey's common-law wife, Tiffany Wade, in which he instructed her to destroy evidence, according to State Bar attorneys.

The attorneys claimed in a court filing that handwritten notes on the three witness statements were "most likely instructions" to a Bey lieutenant, Gary Popoff, "as to which witnesses to eliminate."

Brown has acknowledged that the smuggled materials she gave to a Bey relative included a witness list, the three witness statements and a sealed card to Wade. But she has denied knowing about the alleged handwritten notes or the contents of the card to Wade.

Tuesday was the first day of Brown's State Bar Court disciplinary trial, which is expected to end today or Thursday.

Brown's lawyers have asked her license be suspended for a period of six months to two years since the smuggling charge is equivalent to a misdemeanor. But Bar attorneys are seeking disbarment on the ground that Brown's actions were unethical, undermined the criminal justice system and put Bey witnesses at risk.