Patrick "Butch" Hallinan

1934 - 2019

Patrick "Butch" Hallinan Preeminent defense attorney who successfully represented high profile clients, scion of the renowned activist San Francisco family, died October 8 at his home in Marin. He was 84. A nationally recognized trial attorney specializing in complex criminal cases, he defended controversial clients including authors Ken Kesey, Eldridge Cleaver, and the Soledad Seven prison rights defendants, as well as many public officials. He once represented his entire family after they were arrested during the Auto Row civil rights sit-ins of 1964. Eldest of the six sons of Vincent Hallinan and Vivian Moore Hallinan, he was born in San Francisco in 1934 and by age six was selling stamps door to door in support of refugees of the Spanish Civil War. During the 1945 epidemic, he contracted severe polio, was in an iron lung for six months, but nonetheless went on to box in the 1960 Olympic trials, became a two letter varsity athlete at the University of California, Berkeley, and was elected student-president of the collegiate intermural athletic club, the Big C Society. He was a leading student activist at the dawn of the Free Speech movement and in the West Coast Mobilization against the war in Viet Nam. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year, he graduated with highest honors in 1959 and then went on to earn a J.D. at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1962. He practiced law with his father until he returned to Cal to teach and obtained an MA in anthropology in 1970. He advanced to Phd. candidacy in archeology for which he completed all requirements except for his dissertation on early man in the Great Basin. Fleeing the desert for San Francisco, he began his own wide-ranging 50-year law practice. Throughout his life he avidly pursued an avocation in archeology, begun at age 11 when he found a cache of 12-inch obsidian blades in the Hallinan backyard in Ross and donated them to the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at Cal. He later became a major donor to the de Young and frequent lecturer there on Meso-American art and archeology. In 1982, as lead investigator with a professional team of archeologists, he discovered the Black Rock Desert Columbian mammoth, which is now on display at the Nevada State Museum, Carson City. He is survived by his wife of 37 years, Lauren, his children Cullen, Emily, Neil and Casey Hallinan Hicks; brothers Terence "Kayo," Conn "Ringo," Matthew "Dynamite" and Daniel, and four grandchildren. He was predeceased by his son William "Billy" and his brother Michael "Tuffy." His first marriage ended in divorce. Memorial plans are pending.