San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Widely admired attorney a ‘model public servant’
Peter Keane’s first client was himself.
He arrived in San Francisco from Dallas in a Volkswagen Squareback weighed down by his law books and attempted to register to vote. He was denied on account of a oneyear residency requirement in California in place at the time, and he’d been a resident for only 11 months.
So he sued the state and tried the case, even before he was a registered California lawyer.
“State Voting Residency Law Voided,” read the headline in The Chronicle on Oct. 8, 1970, with the names of plaintiffs Peter and Nancy Keane, his wife, on the front page. It was the nucleus of a reputation that would come to represent the right to a good government and a fair trial in San Francisco.
With a dashing Irish demeanor and a flair for courtroom dramatics, Keane would serve as a public defender, police commissioner, ethics commissioner, city and state bar officer, voter initiative author, TV murder trial analyst, law professor and law school dean.
Keane had retired when he was diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer in February. He died at first light on Easter Sunday at his longtime home in the Richmond District, with his wife of 53 years and two daughters at his bedside. He was 79.
“Peter carried a copy of the Constitution in his pocket everywhere,” his wife said. “It wasn’t just clients, or students. He’d stop and talk about the Constitution with people in the grocery store or while walking on Clement Street. But he never did it in a way that would put anybody down. If somebody posed a question, he’d say, ‘Let’s look it up together.’ He just loved people.”
This included people who were facing heinous crimes with death penalty implications. Keane gave his clients a vigorous defense and was often a last and only friend to many of them. He spent great 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 always arrived in a suit and tie.
“Peter Keane was the model public servant,” said former Mayor Art Agnos. “He had integrity, he had commitment, and he had compassion for people who were helpless in the face of the enormity that comprises law enforcement in our country. He evened the odds.”
Peter Gerald Keane was born Feb. 8, 1943, in an Irish tenement in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., the youngest of seven children. His father, John Martin Keane, was a longshoreman who worked the New York City docks, and his mother, Mae Veronica Neville Keane, worked in the cafeteria at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard.
This left the kids to grow up largely on their own. Keane’s first solo subway ride was at age 6, riding to his job at a corset shop. By age 8, he was delivering groceries for tips on his bicycle, even in the snow.
He was always a voracious reader, riding the subway to the public library, where he could finally find enough peace and quiet to read. He passed the exam for Brooklyn Technical High School, graduating in 1961, while working the docks with his dad. He kept his longshoreman’s job straight through his graduation at City College of New York in 1965.
“He knew all the union songs,” his wife said. “He always said, ‘Keanes do not cross picket lines.’ ”
The first time Keane left New York City for more than a few days was to claim a full academic scholarship to attend law school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Also at SMU law school was Nancy Ellsworth of Oklahoma City, who noticed him as the only kid without a driver’s license. He was also the only student in a heavy overcoat, which also had a different button for every hole, which he’d sewn on himself.
“The first time I knew we were really together is when I sewed on the next button,” Nancy said. “Peter really stood out for not dressing in a preppy way, and the jacket showed self-confidence in a sea of people who were not like him.”
Keane was an officer in student government and recruited Ellsworth to run for treasurer. She lost the election, but three weeks later they were engaged. Keane graduated in 1968 and lost his student deferment for military service. He was drafted by the Army and got a medical deferment on account of being a lifelong sleepwalker.
They were married in September 1968. Keane’s first high-profile legal client was the Vietnam Moratorium Committee of Dallas, which had been legally prevented from reading in front of a Dallas courthouse the names of 2,200 Texans killed in the war. Keane lost that case but won a reputation as rabblerouser. It was a distinction he embraced — until he was tipped off that he was about to be set up for a drug bust with marijuana planted in his possession by police.
That was the catalyst that drove them to California. “We knew absolutely no one in San Francisco,” Nancy said, “but we decided if were both going to be unemployed and broke, we might as well do it in San Francisco.”
They got an apartment in the Richmond and never left the neighborhood.
After his victory in the voter registration case, which he won on appeal, Keane entered private practice and rented a $90 office that came with with a pool secretary, furniture and office plants in the Jack Tar Hotel.
“He was so worried that he would not be able to pay the rent,” Nancy said. “He’d say, ‘How am I going to make $90 a month?’ ” His most reliable clients were the producers of pornographic films accused of violating obscenity laws.
Keane insisted on taking these cases to trial, where his courtroom strategy was to require judges and juries to sit through all the films at issue, dozens of them one after the other in City Hall courtrooms that were open to the public.
In 1979, Public Defender Jeff Brown appointed Keane as San Francisco’s chief assistant public defender, leading an office of 70 attorneys. Keane remained there for 19 years, the longest tenure of any assistant in department history, according to Matt Gonzalez, who now holds Keane’s old job as chief attorney.
In court, Keane had perfect timing and was an engaging storyteller, said Gonzalez, who used to come just to watch him.
“When he talked to jurors, it was like he was sitting down and having a cup of coffee with them,” Gonzalez said. “He listened to what they had to say. Peter was a master at jury selection.”
The O.J. Simpson murder trial, as TV spectacle, offered Keane the chance to spread his engaging style beyond the courtroom. All the stations sought him out for expert commentary, and KPIX offered him an exclusive deal to be on the eyewitness news five nights a week, along with KPIX-FM radio, to inveigh on the trial. “He was measured, he was careful, he was analytical and he never let his own feelings surface,” said Harry Fuller, who hired him at KPIX. “He wasn’t a performer in the way that many anchors are. He was so obviously sincere in what he was saying that he was superb at it.”
Keane could hold an audience. For years he taught criminal procedure, constitutional law and legal ethics at UC Hastings College of the Law. At the end of the term he would personally read, grade and write comments in the margins for the final exams of up to 250 students.
Keane also taught at Golden Gate University School of Law, where he served a term as dean. In both jobs, he was accessible. Anyone could knock on the door if it was closed, which it usually wasn’t.
“One of the things I most admired about Peter is that he supported all students,” said Rachel Van Cleave, also a faculty member and former dean at Golden Gate. “He was definitely a champion of underdogs, and Golden Gate is that kind of law school. He was not afraid at all to take a stand.”
While serving on the San Francisco Ethics Commission from 2013 to 2018, Keane took a stand for campaign finance reform. As chair he pushed the commission to put a measure on the ballot to provide more transparency into political donations. It needed four votes to pass and got only three. When it was voted down he announced, “The vote fails. I resign,” snapped his briefcase shut and walked out of the meeting.
But Keane didn’t give up on his determination to clean up City Hall, and it ended up before the voters in 2019, when he chaired the committee for Proposition F, the “Sunlight on Dark Money” initiative to require the disclosure of who specifically was paying for TV ads in political campaigns. It overwhelmingly passed, thanks largely to Keane, who attended community meetings on its behalf nearly every night.
“Peter left the city better than he found it, that’s for sure,” said Larry Bush, vice chair of the ethics commission.
When Keane’s illness became terminal, his wife told the neighborhood letter carrier, Phat. The carrier sat down on the front steps and cried. That was all the appreciation he needed.
“When I asked Peter how he wanted to be remembered, he said ‘as a good man,’ ” Nancy said. “He always thought that was the highest tribute.”
A family memorial service is private. Donations in his memory may be made to the American Clinicians Academy on Medical Aid in Dying, 2819 Piedmont Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705; and the ACLU Foundation, 9450 S.W. Gemini Drive, PMB 62825, Beaverton, OR 97008-7105.
Survivors include his wife, Nancy Ellsworth Keane, and daughters, Lauren Keane and Heather Keane Leonard, all of San Francisco; sister, Anne Anderson of Timonium, Md.; and five grandchildren.