Heney is known for killing an opposing plaintiff in self-defense and for being shot in the head by a prospective juror during the San Francisco graft trials.

In 1906, Heney prosecuted San Francisco Mayor Eugene Schmitz and political boss Abe Ruef, for bribery.

The man deeply resented Heney's action and while court was in recess, walked into the courtroom and shot the attorney in the jaw.

During the next four years, he ran a cattle business with his brother Ben and operated the trading post at Fort Apache.

Van Winkle had managed Heney's campaign for the U.S. Senate from California the previous year on the Progressive ticket.

[2] In December 1888, she filed for divorce; rumors circulated that Handy had threatened to kill the judge and her lawyers, and she withdrew her suit within the next month.

[2] The divorce trial dragged on for eight months, amounting to a stack of legal documentation more than 5 inches (130 mm) high, consisting of complaints, counter-charges, motions, and depositions from prominent Tucson citizens.

But the judge ordered him to pay his wife $30 a month in alimony, gave her the family home, and rejected Handy's demand for a new trial.

In July 1891, Handy, acting in his mother's name, sued his ex-wife for unlawful detainer of property, trying to force her out of the house that the court had granted her.

[3] On September 24, 1891, while his brother, Ben, was in San Francisco attending to family business,[3] Heney left his office for lunch at noon.

Handy was waiting near the corner of Pennington and Church Streets, where he attacked the much smaller Heney, grabbed him by the neck and pushed him up against a building.

Then one of the contenders jumped to his feet and ran toward the courthouse ... for the first time we ... recognized the hurrying man as Frank Heney.

[6] Witnesses testified that on more than one occasion, as the lawyer walked along the street, Handy had intentionally attempted to run Heney over with his buggy.

Holbrook told John and his siblings that Heney had been the one who threatened and ambushed Handy, and that he had been tried for murder and acquitted only because he was the sole witness.

Jack returned to San Francisco in 1902, married Beatrix Walter, and moved to Tucson, where they lived with his maternal grandmother Larcena Pennington Page for about two years.

Abe Ruef, the primary target of his investigation, dug up Holbrook's story that Heney had ambushed Handy.

Holbrook retold the story to The Daily News, which published it, and Ruef tried to persuade Jack to file charges against Heney.

The "King of the Oregon land fraud ring", Stephen A. D. Puter, wrote in his prison cell Looters of the Public Domain (1908), a tell-all book with portraits of his co-conspirators and copies of documents confirming their criminal acts.

Older went to Washington, D. C. and got President Roosevelt to agree to lend special federal prosecutor Heney to the San Francisco District Attorneys office.

Ruef then wrote to Heney: "You are hereby removed from the position of Assistant District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco."

At 2 a.m. the following morning, Judge Seawell signed an order temporarily restraining Ruef from installing himself as district attorney.

While examining prospective jurors Heney had publicly revealed the fact that one man on the panel, Morris Haas, was ineligible because he had many years earlier served a term in San Quentin Prison.

While the trial was in temporary recess, Haas approached Heney in the courtroom, whipped out a revolver, and shot the attorney in the head; the bullet lodged behind the jaw muscles, where a difference of a fraction of an inch in any direction would have produced a fatal wound.

Haas was placed in a prison cell with a policeman to guard him; but in spite of these precautions he was found dead the following evening, a small pistol beside him.

The chief of police William J. Biggy was deeply hurt by Heney's public criticism of him for negligence in the Haas case.

Biggy later fell overboard from a police launch during a nighttime crossing of San Francisco Bay, a possible suicide.

While most of the community was by now against the prosecution, there was a minority on the side of honesty, which had organized a League of Justice pledged to help at a moment's notice.

He was discouraged, with good reason: a key witness, the supervisor who had paid off his fellows on Ruef's behalf [James Gallagher], had fled the country.

In desperation, Heney himself ran for district attorney, and was defeated by a football hero from Stanford University, Charles Fickert, whose liaison with the grafters was notorious.

[12] William P. Lawlor, the honest judge who had presided in several of the cases, excoriated Fickert and ordered the others to trial; but he was overruled by the court of appeals, which decided that all of the large number of remaining indictments should be quashed.