Vincent Hallinan

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Vincent Hallinan (December 16, 1896 - October 2, 1992) was a lawyer born into a large immigrant Irish-Catholic family and raised in San Francisco and Petaluma, California. His father Patrick, was a member of the Invincibles, a revolutionary organization that assassinated the Lord Mayor of Dublin and his secretary in 1881, the infamous Phoenix Park Massacre. He fled to the U.S. and became a street car conductor in San Franciscoand was also one of the leaders of the Great Front Strike of 1899-1900, the precursor of the 1934 general strike.[1]

Trained by Jesuits in high school,[2], Vincent passed the California Bar at the age of 22 after studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

His early successes in court included personal injury actions against the powerful Market Street Railway Company which ran most of the trolley lines on the streets of San Francisco and was a subsidiary of northern California rail interests. The rail company also owned the system whereby jurors' lists were kept and consulted by an appointed jury commissioner, in Hallinan's time an official of the railway, and he fought against this system for years before state law made the voter rolls the sole source of jurors.

Hallinan's years as a lawyer led to his selection in 1949, with a partner Roy McInnis, to defend Harry Bridges of the ILWU on perjury charges arising from accusations that he had once been a Communist but had denied it.

After the trial, Hallinan spent six months in prison for a contempt citation during the high profile Bridges trial. He was subsequently disbarred by the State Bar of California but fought his way back into the bar after he got out of McNeil Island prison for contempt of court in the Bridges case.

Hallinan ran for President of the United States in the 1952 election, as the candidate for Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party and was the third highest polling candidate in the election.

He and his wife Vivian were indicted on 14 counts of tax evasion. Vincent was convicted on five counts and was fined $622,000 and served to 18 months in federal prison in his second federal prison term, after he reported only 20% of his income from 1947 to 1950.[3] Vivian was acquitted.

In his 1963 autobiography, Hallinan claimed that he was prosecuted by the IRS for his political views, and that the government did not differentiate between tax avoidance (criminal) and tax evasion (illegal but not criminal). Also in his autobiography he argued for prison reform, against laws forbidding private consensual sex, contraception and abortion, he argued in favor of treating drug addiction as a medical condition and providing clean maintenance drugs to addicts, legalizing prostitution and against imperialism and American foreign policy. [4].

Vincent Hallinan is the father of writer Conn M. Hallinan, San Francisco attorney Patrick Hallinan and politician Terence Hallinan.

[edit] References

  1. ^ [http://www.uissf.org/journal/vincenthallinan.html
  2. ^ Hallinan, Vincent. A Lion in Court: The Uninhibited Autobiography of America's Most Controversial Lawyer. New York: Putnam, 1963.
  3. ^ Three-Time Loser - TIME Magazine 3/21/53
  4. ^ Hallinan, Vincent. A Lion in Court: The Uninhibited Autobiography of America's Most Controversial Lawyer. New York: Putnam, 1963.

[edit] External links

[edit] Further reading

  • Hallinan, Vivian and Vincent Hallinan. A Clash of Cultures: Some Contrasts in American and Soviet Morals and Manners. Foreword by Holland Roberts. Illus. with photos. San Francisco: American Russian Institute, 1960. 72 p.
  • Hallinan, Vincent. A Lion in Court: The Uninhibited Autobiography of America's Most Controversial Lawyer. New York: Putnam, 1963.
Preceded by
Henry A. Wallace		 Progressive Party Presidential Candidate
1952 (lost)		 Succeeded by
None