Francis Joseph Heney was an American lawyer, judge, and politician. 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 1891, while an attorney in Tucson, Arizona Territory, he defended the abused wife of John C. Handy. Handy attacked Heney, who shot and killed Handy. Heney later served as Attorney General of the Arizona Territory between 1893 and 1895. He was the chief prosecutor of the Oregon Land Fraud scandal from 1904 to 1910 and served as US District Attorney for the District of Oregon, from January 9 to December 3, 1905. He prosecuted corrupt San Francisco politicians, from 1906 to 1908.

The San Francisco graft trials were a series of attempts from 1905 to 1908 to prosecute public officials in the city of San Francisco, California, for graft and other political corruption. Among those implicated were Mayor Eugene Schmitz, political boss Abe Ruef, and various members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, all of whom had taken bribes from business owners. Ruef was at the center of the corruption; while acting as Schmitz's attorney, he approved all city contracts and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payment from business owners, keeping a portion for himself and distributing the remainder to the Mayor and Supervisors.