Berkeley attorney Lorna Brown admits that smuggling a client's hit list out of prison was “a really foolish, awful, bad act” in requesting her law license back. Prosecutors respond with 800 pages of evidence saying that perhaps she shouldn’t get it.

The insane Your Black Muslim Bakery scandal of the late 2000s is back in the news. The attorney for convicted murderer Yusuf Bey IV, Lorna Brown, literally smuggled Bey’s hit list out of prison so additional killings could be carried out. She was unsurprisingly stripped of her law license over the move, but is busting out some second thoughts and crocodile tears, as the San Jose Mercury News reports that Brown is asking the California Bar Association to reinstate her.

A quick refresher on the gruesome, off-the-charts crazy Your Black Muslim Bakery affair: The Oakland-based bakery had enormous political clout in the 90s and aughts, despite constant rumors of rape, kidnapping, and torture ordered by its polygamist founder Yusuf Bey. This all continued under Bey’s son Yusuf Bey IV, and blew up with the 2007 gang-style murder of Oakland Post journalist Chauncey Bailey. A lengthy 2011 trial resulted in Bey being sentenced to life in prison. But during the trial, Bey gave his attorney Brown a sealed envelope, to be delivered to his wife and followers, instructing them to destroy evidence and kill a few more people.

According to the Merc, Brown “thought the sealed envelope held a love letter to Bey’s common-law wife.” She was disbarred in 2013.

Zach Stauffer's documentary 'A Day Late in Oakland' chronicles the life of Chauncey Bailey,

While the whole Your Black Muslim Bakery saga resulted in three murders, this particular hit list did not result in any killings. Bey was later caught trying to coordinate more murders from a Vacavillle prison facility with a smuggled-in cellphone in 2016, but again, did not successfully get anyone whacked in that affair.

This is no comfort to prosecutors, who submitted 800 pages arguing against reinstating her. Among the many problematic aspects to her reinstatement, prosecutors apparently had to call security at her July deposition because her attorney got so unruly and bent out of shape during questioning.

In that deposition, Brown said she lied about smuggling Bey’s hit list because “I was trying to cover up and protect him,” and admits she got too close to the cultish Bey family. Her case goes before a State Bar judge in October.

Related: The 9 Most Infamous Cults In The Bay Area [SFist]


Image: ILike2BeAnonymous via Wikimedia Commons