LUST FOR JUSTICE: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra

by Cathy Scott

"His trials have garnered him acclaim as one of the greatest criminal-defense attorneys of the century. He's the white tornado in court, a semantic samyrai, a shaman, a bard, a hero to some, a trickster to others, and always a force to be reckoned with, respected by all."

Such is the description of Tony Serra, a renowned, pony-tailed, radical criminal defense attorney in the just-released nonfiction legal biography LUST FOR JUSTICE: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra.

Courtroom artist, and now author, Paulette Frankl spent 17 years following Serra--and tracking him down--from courtroom to courtroom. LUST FOR JUSTICE is a culmination of those years.

It was in one of those courtrooms, this one in Las Vegas, where I first met Paulette. It was 2000 and I was in Clark County District Court to cover the Ted Binion case--the first of two Binion trials--and Paulette was there to sketch and paint the goings-on for news outlets. We became fast friends. During a dinner downtown near the courthouse after a day in court, I vividly remember Paulette telling me about the book and her work-in-progress. I also remember her saying, "I'm not a writer." She undersold herself; Paulette is every bit a writer with a powerfully descriptive voice, as evidenced in the pages of LUST FOR JUSTICE.

During the Binion prelim hearing for the retrial of defendants Sandra Murphy and Richard Tabish, who were accused of murdering casino heir Binion, I met Tony Serra. He had taken Tabish on as a client after Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz successfully argued before the Nevada Supreme Court for a retrial. Earlier, when a phone call came in to Serra's office asking Tony to consider defending Tabish, Paulette happened to be sitting in Tony's office.

"Take the case," Paulette told him. After all, she had first-hand knowledge after sitting through every moment of the first lengthy trial--the biggest trial, which ended in guilty verdicts, Las Vegas had seen in recent history. She believed the defendants needed a lawyer like Tony on their side. For the second trial, with Tony at the helm, the case ended in murder acquittals for Serra's client, Tabish, as well as co-defendant Murphy. Binion died from an overdose of prescription and street drugs, which Binion had himself purchased. The prosecution, however, charged Tabish and Murphy with forcing the drugs on Binion, despite no physical evidence against them.

In the midst of the retrial, with nightly prepping for the next day's proceedings, Serra took time out to attend an evening fundraiser where Paulette's art was featured. Attending the event with Serra was his Binion defense team, Shari Greenberger and Anna Ling.

Paulette Frankl's book, with a foreword by attorney Gerry Spence, had been hatched more than a decade earlier. And while she had interviewed Serra multiple times, the idea and content for the book morphed from her early interviews and Tony's soliloquies to the completed literary work we see today, which vividly covers Serra in action in the courtroom.

Yet, Paulette doesn't paint a 100-percent positive portrayal of Serra. She includes the flawed man as well. Despite his foibles, Serra has a following that reaches far and wide. He was the subject of the 1989 movie True Believer, starring James Woods and Robert Downey, Jr., about a Chinatown (San Francisco) murder case in which Serra won an acquittal for defendant Chol Soo Lee. He also successfully represented Huey Newton, leader of the Black Panther Party in a murder trial and represented individuals from groups as diverse and politically charged as the White Panthers, Hells Angels, Earth First! and New World Liberation Front, cases which included clients clients like Patrick "Hootie" Croy, who was wrongly convicted, as well as Ellie Nesler and Symbionese Liberation Army members Sara Jane Olson, Russell Little and Michael Bortin. Serra won the Trial Lawyer of the Year award in 2003 from Trial Lawyers for Public Justice for his successful litigation of Judi Bari against the FBI.

I am so proud of Paulette and her tireless, nearly two-decade effort in capturing lightning in a bottle and pulling together this beautifully written tome. And I'm proud to call her friend. LUST FOR JUSTICE is, as are Paulette's paintings, a brilliant work of art. She is, after all, an artist first, and the artist's brush is evident in her words alongside her illustrations of Tony, which are sprinkled throughout the text.

Tony, a self-described "street lawyer," is anti-establishment, taking a vow of poverty early on not to become a rich lawyer off of the backs of those who need a fair hand in the criminal justice system. He drives old cars, wears second-hand suits, and lives weekends with his longtime girlfriend in the sleepy beach town of Bolinas and weekdays in a modest North Beach apartment in San Francisco near his co-op law office. He owns nothing and only asks for payment to cover his basic expenses. Still, his vow of poverty landed him in hot water a couple of times with the IRS for not filing tax returns.


When Tony, celebrated by filmmakers and fellow lawyers as an advocate for the downtrodden, was sent to the Lompoc Federal Prison Camp for 10 months in 2006 for tax evasion, he assisted fellow inmates with their legal appeals. Also while incarcerated, he corresponded with Paulette. At one point, Paulette sent Tony a painting she titled "Desert Landscape." His letter in return was simple and revealed that at the age of around 70--he won't answer the age question--he was looking forward to returning to the courtroom.

Got your "Desert Landscape." Your art work adorns my gray barracks' cabinet wall. Gives me a lift sometimes when the mind drips dreary.

I'm four-tenths finished--it will be over soon. I'm leaner and stronger. I'm ready for my murder trial re-entry in March. I've had a sufficient "retreat"; I'm ripe to join the struggle again.

Indeed, upon Tony's release from prison, he filed, with three attorneys, a class-action lawsuit seeking minimum wages for himself and other inmates, citing slave wages as unconstitutional. Serra's fight for the underdog goes on, and Paulette artfully covered his unwavering quest for justice in this painstaking work.

The book launch for LUST FOR JUSTICE is Saturday, Nov. 20, at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, where Serra is speaking and signing books with Frankl. Order the book direct here.

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'A Death in the Desert'

by Cathy Scott 

The Las Vegas homicide investigation into casino heir Ted Binion's death culminated in not just one trial, but two. The case, which attracted a media herd, became known as Las Vegas's biggest trial, surpassing even the storied mob trials from the 1980s. 

The case has also been called a "murder mystery." But Binion's death was hardly a mystery -- a point hammered home in a documentary recently aired on Investigation Discovery Channel's "On the case with Paula Zahn." In "A Death in the Desert," Zahn carefully laid out the discrepancies in the case. 

Binion died sometime in the late morning hours of Sept.17, 1998. It was no secret he'd struggled with drugs for years. The day before his death, Binion bought tar heroin from his drug dealer. His next-door neighbor, a physician, filled a Xanax prescription for him. So Binion's stately home wasn't treated as a crime scene after his body was discovered. The casual police behavior, compounded by people walking in and out removing valuables such as expensive fine art and silver coins, would come back to haunt the prosecution team: There was no smoking gun, and police gathered no hard evidence from the scene.

But in the days following Binion's death, Sandy Murphy, his live-in girlfriend of three years, became a suspect, as did Rick Tabish. Tabish, Binion's friend, would eventually be linked romantically with Sandy. 

Spurred largely by Binion's baby sister, Becky Behnen, the district attorney indicted Murphy and Tabish in Binion's death. Becky had a bitter falling out with her brother before his death. The two hadn't spoken in months, and they were rumored to have taken out contracts on each other's lives. The rumors never substantiated, but to put it mildly, Ted and Becky didn't like each other. 

Many things struck me as odd while I covered the case as a journalist. For one, Las Vegas police allowed private detective Tom Dillard to take over and lead the police investigation. Granted, he was a retired homicide detective from the Las Vegas police department. Still, it was unprecedented. 

Add to that the fact that Dillard was paid a whopping $400,000 by Binion's estate to investigate the case, a point confirmed by Murphy's defense attorney Michael Cristalli in the documentary. Despite the odd involvement of the highly paid outside investigator, the case moved forward through the judicial system. I was fascinated by red flags in the case; I started writing a book about it while covering it for Reuters news service and the now-defunct APBNews.com. It had the makings of a made-for-TV movie (which, ultimately, it became).

The Binion family had a Wild West reputation, starting with Ted's father, Benny, (left) who once served prison time for killing a man in Texas. The younger Binion was also known for wild behavior. He also was accused of killing a man, but, unlike his father, he was never charged. So it came as no surprise when the media covered Ted Binion's death intensely. Court TV aired the first trial gavel-to-gavel. National and international TV and print reporters, along with a courtroom artist, filled the courtroom each day.

At the end of that trial, in 2000, Murphy and Tabish were each convicted of murder and of burglarizing Binion's underground vault to unearth his buried silver, which was worth millions (the Binions were known for burying their fortunes on family owned property). 

Murphy and Tabish appealed their convictions and, on a technicality, were granted a new trial by the Nevada Supreme Court. Once again, they were tried together. It was during the second trial, with Tabish represented by radical civil rights attorney J. Tony Serra, that the prosecution's case against the pair unraveled. 

During the first trial, circumstantial evidence presented by star expert witness Michael Baden all but sealed Murphy and Tabish's fate--that is, until Serra came along for the second trial. Serra questioned Baden at length about a so-called button mark left on Binion's chest. Baden testified during the first trial that the mark was made by someone sitting on Binion, compressing his chest, while simultaneously holding a hand over Binion's nose and mouth to suffocate him. In May 2000, Murphy and Tabish were each convicted of murder and of burglary of Binion's buried silver cache. Jurors interviewed afterward said Baden's testimony swayed them toward guilty verdicts.

During the second trial, however, attorneys Serra and Cristalli used enlarged photos to prove that the button mark on Binion's chest was actually a blister. In November 2004, the jury returned not-guilty verdicts on the murder charges but let stand the burglary convictions.

Today, Sandy Murphy lives in Southern California. After the second trial, she was granted time served for the burglary charge and released. Rick Tabish remains in a Nevada prison and is expected to be released sometime in 2010. Sandy continues, through the court system, to clear her name in the burglary case.

As I said during my interview with the Investigation Discovery Channel, I'm certain there was no murder, that Ted Binion instead died from a self-induced drug overdose. It was, as Tony Serra observed, "casino royalty" and the "Binion money machine" who convicted the pair.

The second edition of my book, Death in the Desert: The Ted Binion Homicide Case, will be released in the spring of 2010. 

Photos of the Binions courtesy of the Binion Collection.

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