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An attorney already facing suspension of her law license for smuggling an alleged hit list out of jail for the former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery committed other breaches of legal ethics never made public, according to interviews and documents. The state Supreme Court is considering whether to bar Lorna Brown, 66, of Berkeley, from practicing law for two years for her role for conveying a sealed envelope to one of Yusuf Bey IV's followers. Prosecutors say it contained a list of people Bey IV wanted killed to stop them from testifying in his 2011 murder trial for the...

An attorney who reportedly smuggled a witness hit list out of an Alameda County jail could soon be practicing law again after the state bar's proposed slap on the wrist and bungling by District Attorney Nancy O'Malley's office. Only the state Supreme Court can stop this travesty. In March 2010, while defending Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusef Bey IV in an infamous East Bay murder case, attorney Lorna Patton Brown repeatedly couriered documents for her client. She delivered one envelope to his common-law wife, who then delivered it to a parolee self-described as Bey's "number one soldier." On it,...

Imprisoned Your Black Muslim bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV punished for bribing guard to get him a cell phone - The Chauncey Bailey Project - Convicted triple killer Yusuf Bey IV, who was accused of trying to order followers to kill witnesses at his murder trial last year, has been placed in solitary confinement at San Quentin state prison after trying to bribe a guard to give him a cell phone, a Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman said.Bey IV, 26, the former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, "offered an officer money and sports tickets in exchange for a...

In many countries, journalists who investigate political corruption or major crime figures get thrown into prison, gunned down or kidnapped -- never to be heard from again. In the United States, however, few people have been crazy enough or bold enough to assassinate a journalist to stop a story. It has happened twice. In 1976, when Arizona Republic Reporter Don Bolles was mortally wounded in a car bombing in Phoenix. Then, on Aug. 2, 2007, when a brainwashed 19-year-old man with a sawed-off shotgun ambushed journalist Chauncey Bailey as he walked from a McDonald's in downtown Oakland to his newspaper...

The attorney for former Your Black Muslim Bakery head Yusuf Bey IV is expected to be suspended from practicing law after acknowledging that she smuggled documents for Bey. Under a deal with the State Bar Court, 65-year-old Lorna Patton Brown would have to serve at least six months of a two-year suspension.

More than four years after journalist Chauncey Bailey was gunned down in broad daylight on a downtown Oakland street, the man who ordered him and two others killed was sentenced today to prison for the rest of his life - but not before he proclaimed his intention to find the real mastermind of the slayings. Yusuf Bey IV, 25, denied that he had ordered the killings and, in a statement read by his attorney, said, "I will not rest until I find those who are truly responsible for setting this operation up." Bey's sentencing was a final act of sorts...

The former leader of an Oakland community group will spend the rest of his life in prison after being convicted of ordering the killings of three men, including the first American journalist killed on U.S. soil for reporting a story in more than a decade. An Alameda County Superior Court judge sentenced Yusuf Bey IV, 25, to three life terms in prison without the possibility of parole Friday. As head of Your Black Muslim Bakery, Bey ordered his workers to kill the men in separate attacks in July 2007, prosecutors said. According to trial testimony, Odell Roberson, 31, was killed...

JUSTICE. Finally. For a time, it looked as though this day would never come. It appeared that the brazen Aug. 2, 2007, shooting of journalist Chauncey Bailey in downtown Oakland would go the way of so many other unsolved murders in a city where it often seems no one is held accountable. Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV was widely suspected of ordering Bailey killed to prevent the 57-year-old Oakland Post editor from publishing a story about the bakery's troubled finances. Yet Bey and accused accomplice Antoine Mackey were not charged with the killing until April 2009. For...

The former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery was convicted today of three counts of first-degree murder for ordering the slayings of Oakland newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey and two other men, capping a high-profile trial that was closely watched by journalists and First Amendment advocates. A second defendant, former bakery associate Antoine Mackey, 25, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for the 2007 killings of Bailey and Michael Wills, 36. The jury split on a third count involving the 2007 slaying of Odell Roberson Jr. 31, , and Judge Thomas Reardon declared a mistrial. Both Bey and Mackey...

OAKLAND -- Jurors began deliberations Monday in the Chauncey Bailey murder trial, following two months of testimony from dozens of witnesses. The jury of five men and seven women received the case shortly after Deputy District Attorney Melissa Krum gave an hourlong rebuttal to defense attorneys' closing statements. Krum emphasized what she said was ample evidence that former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV ordered Bailey, a local journalist, and two other men killed nearly four years ago. Bey IV and his co-defendant in the triple-murder trial, bakery member Antoine Mackey, listened intently as Krum spoke, sometimes whispering...

OAKLAND -- Former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV "is not a normal person," a prosecutor said Wednesday, portraying the 25-year-old as "a child king" who was obsessed with saving the failing bakery at any cost and so silenced journalist Chauncey Bailey in a blatant attempt to stop negative publicity. Bey IV "thought he ran (Oakland)," prosecutor Melissa Krum told the jury of seven men and five women as closing statements began in Bey IV's triple-murder trial. "He terrorized our city. He killed a reporter to stop his story or avenge stories already in print." Krum's closing arguments...

The Oakland police sergeant who led the investigation into the slaying of journalist Chauncey Bailey denied in court Tuesday that he had promised to protect the former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery from criminal liability in the case. Sgt. Derwin Longmire's comments came as the trial of Yusuf Bey IV, 25, the one-time head of the self-described black empowerment group, and a former bakery member drew near a close. Alameda County prosecutor Melissa Krum referred to a conversation secretly recorded by police in 2007 in which Bey boasted to followers that his ties with Longmire were "the reason they...

OAKLAND -- A man who worked in a liquor store that Yusuf Bey IV and members of Your Black Muslim Bakery vandalized in November 2005 answered "I don't remember" more than 50 times Monday when a prosecutor asked him about the attack. Ehab Taha claimed he couldn't even remember what city the West Oakland store, New York Market, was in. Judge Thomas Reardon later described him as "willfully evasive." "I don't remember what I had for breakfast this morning," Taha said in response to one of prosecutor Melissa Krum's questions. "I have a lot of memory loss." Krum called him...

YUSUF BEY IV is entitled to a fair trial on charges that he ordered the 2007 killings of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other men. But he and his supporters are not entitled to manipulate the system or intimidate witnesses. Before the trial even started, according to a court declaration from the district attorney's office, Bey tried to use his lawyer to shuttle out of jail a list of witnesses he wanted killed. The plot was stopped and no one was harmed. The attorney, Lorna Patton Brown, has given up her license to practice law. Now, a disturbing series...

OAKLAND -- A man who was convicted of using a fake ID to steal a car from a San Bruno dealership along with former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV told jurors in the Chauncey Bailey murder trial Thursday that didn't remember the crime and denied it happened. Dyamen Williams, who said he had known Bey IV since he was 3 or 4 years old, replied "absolutely not" when asked if he used a driver's license with the name Victor Franklin at Platinum Motors in 2005 to drive off with a Pontiac Firebird. Court records show he was...

OAKLAND -- Former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV accused the judge in his triple murder trial of being unfair to him during a hearing on key evidence Tuesday morning and asked if the proceedings could go on without him. Judge Thomas Reardon said at the end of a terse exchange that Bey IV did not have to be present for the proceedings, but Bey IV did not formally ask to be removed from court and sat through the testimony of two witnesses when jurors returned a few minutes later. At issue was how much of a recorded...

Jury in the Chauncey Bailey murder trial could see the hourlong clip as soon as Wednesday. OAKLAND -- Large portions of a secretly recorded police video on which former Your Black Muslim leader Yusuf Bey IV laughed about the 2007 killing of journalist Chauncey Bailey, threatened to kill a police officer and implicated himself in a kidnapping and torture case can be shown to jurors, a judge ruled Tuesday. The jury in Bey IV and co-defendant Antoine Mackey's triple murder trial could see the video as early as Wednesday, after other witnesses testify in the case. Judge Thomas Reardon, working...

OAKLAND -- A witness who said he was journalist Chauncey Bailey's anonymous source for an article on Your Black Muslim Bakery testified Wednesday against his brother-in-law -- and the man who once allegedly wanted to kill him -- bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV. Saleem Bey said he met with Bailey twice at the Oakland Post in summer 2007 and gave him documents he said supported his claims that Bey IV had no legal right to control the bakery. In tense exchanges with prosecutor Melissa Krum, Saleem Bey gave clipped, often one word answers. He was on the stand a little...

OAKLAND -- Yusuf Bey IV ordered the death of the relative of a man who had killed his older brother, Devaughndre Broussard told jurors Monday morning. Bey IV, the former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, wanted the relative, Odell Roberson, dead in what Broussard called "an eye for an eye" philosophy practiced at the bakery. "He said, 'Take him out when you get the chance,'" Broussard told the jury at the triple-murder trial of Bey IV and his co-defendant, Antoine Mackey. Broussard, who has pleaded guilty to two murders and agreed to testify in exchange for a 25-year prison...

OAKLAND -- Jurors in the Chauncey Bailey murder trial flinched -- and some looked away -- Thursday morning when shown an autopsy photo of a face blasted away by shotgun pellets. Prosecutor Melissa Krum displayed the photo on a large screen as the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, Dr. Thomas Rogers, described the wound. One juror, a bald man in glasses, grimaced noticeably. Defendants Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey glanced at the photo and then looked away. It showed what Rogers described as an eight-inch wound of his "face bones, brain, skull, teeth." Krum asked Rogers the condition...