Peter Keane’s initial client was himself.
He arrived in San Francisco from Dallas in a Volkswagen Squareback weighed down by his law textbooks and attempted to register to vote. He was denied on account of a 1-year residency prerequisite in California in location at the time, and he’d only been a resident for 11 months.
So he sued the state, and attempted the scenario even ahead of he was a registered California attorney.
“State Voting Residency Regulation Voided” browse the headline in The Chronicle on Oct. 8, 1970, with the names of plaintiffs Peter and Nancy Keane on the entrance page. It was the nucleus of a track record that would arrive to stand for the proper to a fantastic governing administration and a good trial in San Francisco.
With a dashing Irish demeanor and a flair for courtroom dramatics, Keane would provide as a community defender, law enforcement commissioner, ethics commissioner, town and condition Bar officer, voter initiative writer, Television set murder trial analyst, regulation professor and regulation university dean.
Keane experienced retired when he was identified with metastatic colon most cancers in February. He died at initial gentle Easter Sunday at his longtime dwelling in the Richmond District, with his wife of 53 years and two daughters at his bedside. He was 79.
“Peter carried a duplicate of the Constitution in his pocket just about everywhere,” claimed his spouse. “It wasn’t just purchasers, or pupils. He’d halt and talk about the Structure with people in the grocery shop or whilst going for walks on Clement Road. But he under no circumstances did it in a way that would set anybody down. If any person posed a dilemma, he’d say, ‘let’s glance it up with each other.’ He just liked folks.”
This integrated men and women who were being going through heinous crimes with loss of life penalty implications. Keane gave his shoppers a vigorous protection and was typically a final and only mate to lots of of them. He spent wonderful quantities of time in holding cells at San Francisco County Jail and in visitation areas at San Quentin, Santa Rita, Folsom and Atascadero prisons, and constantly arrived in a go well with and tie.
“Peter Keane was the product general public servant,” reported previous mayor Artwork Agnos. “He had integrity, he experienced commitment and he experienced compassion for individuals who ended up helpless in the experience of the enormity that includes regulation enforcement in our place. He evened the odds.”
Peter Gerald Keane was born February 8, 1943 in an Irish tenement in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. as the youngest of seven youngsters. His father, John Martin Keane, was a longshoreman who worked the New York Town docks, and his mother, Mae Veronica Neville Keane, labored in the cafeteria at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard.
This remaining the young ones to develop up largely on their individual. Keane’s 1st solo subway journey was at age 6, driving to his task at a corset shop. By age 8, he was providing groceries for ideas on his bicycle, even in the snow.
He was often a voracious reader, using the subway to the general public library the place he could finally uncover adequate peace and peaceful to read through. He passed the examination for Brooklyn Technological Higher Faculty, graduating in 1961, though working the docks with his father. He held his longshoreman’s position straight as a result of his graduation at Metropolis School of New York, in 1965.
“He knew all the union tunes,” said his spouse. “He normally reported ‘Keanes do not cross picket lines.’”
The first time Keane left New York Metropolis for extra than a couple of times was to claim a total educational scholarship to go to legislation college at Southern Methodist College in Dallas. Also at SMU law faculty was Nancy Ellsworth of Oklahoma Metropolis, who seen him as the only child without a driver’s license. He was also the only student in a significant overcoat which also experienced a unique button for each and every gap, which he’d sewn on himself.
“The to start with time I knew we had been seriously collectively is when I sewed on the upcoming button,” Nancy claimed. “Peter seriously stood out for not dressing in a preppy way and the jacket showed self-self confidence in a sea of men and women who were being not like him.”
Keane was an officer in scholar government and recruited Ellsworth to operate for treasurer. She lost the election but a few months later they were engaged. Keane graduated in 1968 and lost his college student deferment for army services. He was drafted by the Army and bought a health care deferment on account of becoming a lifelong sleepwalker.
They had been married in Sept. of 1968. Keane’s initial high profile lawful client was Vietnam Moratorium Committee of Dallas, who had been lawfully prevented from reading the names of 2,200 Texans killed in the war dead in front of a Dallas courthouse. Keane lost that scenario but gained a status as rabble-rouser. It was a difference he embraced — right until he was tipped off that he was about to be established up for a drug bust with cannabis planted in his possession by police.
That was the catalyst that drove them to California. “We understood definitely no one in San Francisco,” said Nancy, “but we resolved if were equally likely to be unemployed and broke, we may possibly as properly do it in San Francisco.”
They acquired an condominium in the Richmond and by no means left the neighborhood.
Soon after his victory in the voter registration case, which he won on appeal, Keane entered non-public follow and rented a $90 place of work that came with with a pool secretary, home furniture and business office plants in the Jack Tar Resort.
“He was so concerned that he would not be ready to spend the lease,” claimed his spouse, Nancy. “He’d say ‘how am I going to make $90 a month?” His most trusted clientele ended up the producers of pornographic movies in violation of obscenity legal guidelines.
Keane insisted on having these scenarios to trial where by his courtroom strategy was to demand judges and juries to sit through all the movies at problem, dozens of them one particular following the other in Town Corridor courtrooms that ended up open to the general public.
In 1979 public defender Jeff Brown appointed Keane as San Francisco’s Main Assistant General public Defender, leading an place of work of 70 attorneys. Keane remained there for 19 years, the longest tenure of any assistant in division historical past, according to Matt Gonzales who now retains Keane’s previous job as chief lawyer.
In courtroom, Keane experienced ideal timing and was an participating story teller, claimed Gonzales, who applied to come just to enjoy him.
“When he talked to jurors, it was like he was sitting down and acquiring a cup of coffee with them,” mentioned Gonzalez. “He listened to what they experienced to say. Peter was a grasp at jury choice.”
The O.J. Simpson murder trial, as Tv spectacle, provided Keane the chance to distribute his participating model over and above the courtroom. All the stations sought him out for pro commentary, and KPIX made available him an exclusive offer to be on the Eyewitness News five evenings a week, together with KPIX-FM radio, to inveigh on the trial.
“He was measured, he was very careful, he was analytical and he never ever let his personal feelings surface,” explained Harry Fuller, who employed him at KPIX. “He wasn’t a performer in the way that lots of anchors are. He was so definitely sincere in what he was indicating that he was excellent at it.”
Keane could keep an audience. For years he taught felony treatment, constitutional legislation and lawful ethics at UC Hastings College of the Regulation. At the finish of the time period he would personally study, quality and compose responses in the margins for the final exams of up to 250 students.
Keane also taught at Golden Gate University College of Legislation, where by he served a term as dean. In both career he was accessible. Any person could knock on the door if it was shut, which it ordinarily was not.
“One of the matters I most admired about Peter is that he supported all students,” claimed Rachel Van Cleave, also a college member and previous dean at Golden Gate. “He was certainly a winner of underdogs and Golden Gate is that kind of legislation school. He was not concerned at all to consider a stand.”
Whilst serving on the San Francisco Ethics Commission from 2013 to 2018, Keane took a stand for marketing campaign finance reform. As chair he pushed the fee to put a evaluate on the ballot aimed at providing much more transparency into political donations. It essential 4 votes to move and only bought three. 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 perseverance to clean up town corridor and it ended up prior to the voters in 2019, when he chaired the committee for Proposition F, the “Sunlight on Darkish Money” initiative to call for the disclosure of who exclusively was spending for Tv advertisements in political strategies. It overwhelmingly handed, thanks largely to Keane, who attended local community conferences on its behalf just about every night time.
“Peter left the town greater than he uncovered it, that is for confident,” explained Larry Bush, Vice Chair of the ethics fee.
When Keane’s illness turned terminal, his spouse explained to the community letter provider, Phat. The carrier sat down on the entrance steps and cried. That was all the appreciation he necessary.
“When I questioned Peter how he needed to be remembered, he reported ‘as a excellent person,’” said his spouse. “He constantly thought that was the maximum tribute.”
A spouse and children memorial services is non-public. Donations in his memory may possibly be designed to the American Clinicians Academy on Medical Support in Dying, 2819 Piedmont Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 and the ACLU Foundation, 9450 S.W. Gemini Drive, PMB 62825, Beaverton, OR 97008-7105.
Survivors incorporate 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 personnel writer. E mail: [email protected] Twitter:@samwhitingsf