Tony Serra | |
|---|---|
 Serra in 2018 | |
| Born | Joseph Tony Serra December 30, 1934 [1] |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Stanford University (BA) University of California, Berkeley (JD) |
| Occupation | Attorney |
Joseph Tony Serra (born December 30, 1934) is an American criminal defense and civil rights attorney, political activist and tax resister from San Francisco.
A San Francisco native, Serra was raised in the Outer Sunset district. His father, Anthony Serra, was an immigrant from Mallorca who worked in a jelly bean factory, and his mother, Gladys (Fineberg) Serra was a Russian Jewish immigrant from Odessa; she died by suicide in 1977. [2]
Serra earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Stanford University and a Juris Doctor degree from Boalt Hall at the University of California, Berkeley. While in law school, Serra was a contributor to the California Law Review .
In 1970, Serra successfully defended Black Panther leader Huey Newton in a murder trial.
In 1983, Serra won an acquittal for Chol Soo Lee, a Korean American immigrant in San Francisco who had been convicted of murder in 1973, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He has also represented individuals from groups as diverse and politically-charged as the White Panthers, Hells Angels, Good Earth and New World Liberation Front (NWLF). Some of these individuals include Brownie Mary, Dennis Peron, Hooty Croy, Ellie Nesler and Symbionese Liberation Army members Sara Jane Olson, [3] Russell Little and Michael Bortin.
In 2003, Serra was awarded the Trial Lawyer of the Year award by the organization Trial Lawyers for Public Justice for his successful litigation of Judi Bari against the FBI. [4]
In 2004, Serra won an acquittal during a retrial on murder charges for co-defendant Rick Tabish in the death of casino mogul Ted Binion. [5]
In 2015, he defended Chinatown crime boss Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow. [6]
Serra has been in trouble with the law several times for failure to pay income taxes. He refused to pay taxes in protest of the War in Iraq based on his conviction that the Bush administration was leading the country in the wrong direction and that he would, therefore, not contribute any money to fund what he saw as Bush's corrupt politics.[ citation needed ] On July 29, 2005, he was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison, to be served at Lompoc, California, and ordered to pay $100,000 in restitution for a misdemeanor conviction of willful failure to pay taxes. [7] In 2006, Ephraim Margolin and Douglas L. Rappaport represented Serra against the State Bar of California when he faced action for failing to file a tax return. His license to practice law in California was suspended for one year, and he was placed on a probationary period for two years. [8] Serra was released from the federal camp in February 2007, reporting immediately to a San Francisco halfway house. He was released from federal custody, and the halfway house, on March 13, 2007, after finishing his sentence. [9] Along with three other attorneys, Serra filed a class-action lawsuit seeking minimum wages for himself and for other inmates, citing slave wages as unconstitutional. [10]
Serra has taken a vow of poverty and is known for living a frugal lifestyle and driving a run-down car. [11] He does not have a cell phone, a bank account or a credit card. [12] In a disciplinary hearing before the State Bar of California, Serra stated, "I took an informal vow of poverty. I vowed that I would never take profit from the practice of law, that I would not buy anything new, that I would recycle everything, that I would own no properties - no stocks or bonds, no images of prosperity. I still drive an old junk of a car. I still barely make the rent each month; I have accumulated nothing by way of savings, and I live from hand to mouth." [13]
All income from his cases is distributed to other attorneys except for a very small portion that he uses to pay for his rent and for gas for his car.[ citation needed ]
Serra has five children with Mary Edna Dineen: Shelter, Ivory, Chime Day, Wonder Fortune and Lilac Bright. [14] Dineen raised all five of them in a home in Bolinas, California that Serra called a "sprawling shack." [15]
Serra has two younger brothers: the late Richard Serra, a prominent sculptor, and Rudy Serra, also a noted artist. [16] Richard paid for the college educations of Serra's five children. [17]
The 1989 film True Believer was loosely based on the 1982-83 retrial of Chol Soo Lee. The film's main character, Eddie Dodd, played by James Woods, is based on Serra. [18]
The film inspired a spin-off series, Eddie Dodd, which ran for six episodes in 1991 on ABC; Dodd was played by Treat Williams. [19]
A biography of Serra, Lust for Justice: The Radical Life and Law of J. Tony Serra , written by courtroom artist Paulette Frankl and with a foreword by criminal defense attorney Gerry Spence, was released in October 2010. [20]
The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army was a small, American militant far-left organization active between 1973 and 1975; it claimed to be a vanguard movement. The FBI and wider American law enforcement considered the SLA to be the first terrorist organization to rise from the American left. Six members died in a May 1974 shootout with police in Los Angeles. The three surviving fugitives recruited new members, but nearly all of them were apprehended in 1975 and prosecuted.
Gwen Amber Rose Araujo was an American teenager who was murdered in Newark, California, at the age of 17. She was murdered by four men, two of whom she had been sexually intimate with, who beat and strangled her after discovering that she was transgender. Two of the defendants were convicted of second-degree murder, but not the requested hate-crime enhancements to the charges. The other two defendants pleaded guilty or no-contest to voluntary manslaughter. In at least one of the trials, a "trans panic defense"—an extension of the gay panic defense—was employed.
Wendy Masako Yoshimura is an American still life watercolor painter. She was a member of the leftist terrorist group the Symbionese Liberation Army during the mid-1970s. She was born in Manzanar, one of numerous World War II-era internment camps for Japanese Americans who were forced out of their homes and businesses along the West Coast. She was raised both in Japan and California's Central Valley.
Francis Lee Bailey Jr., better known to the general public as F. Lee Bailey, was an American criminal defense attorney. Bailey's name first came to nationwide attention for his involvement in the second murder trial of Sam Sheppard, a surgeon accused of murdering his wife. He later served as the attorney in a number of other high-profile cases, such as Albert DeSalvo, a suspect in the "Boston Strangler" murders, heiress Patty Hearst's trial for bank robberies committed during her involvement with the Symbionese Liberation Army, and US Army Captain Ernest Medina for the My Lai Massacre. He was a member of the "Dream Team" in the trial of former football player O. J. Simpson, who was accused of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. He is considered one of the greatest lawyers of the 20th century.
Vincent Hallinan was an American lawyer and candidate for President of the United States in the 1952 election on the Progressive Party ticket.
The State Bar of California is an administrative division of the Supreme Court of California which licenses attorneys and regulates the practice of law in California. It is responsible for managing the admission of lawyers to the practice of law, investigating complaints of professional misconduct, prescribing appropriate discipline, accepting attorney-member fees, and financially distributing sums paid through attorney trust accounts to fund nonprofit legal entities. It is directly responsible to the Supreme Court of California. Its trustees are appointed by the Supreme Court, the California Legislature, and Governor of California. All attorney admissions are issued as recommendations of the State Bar, which are then routinely ratified by the Supreme Court. Attorney discipline is handled by the State Bar Office of Chief Trial Counsel, which acts as prosecutor before the State Bar Court of California. The State Bar has been cited for its corrupt practices during the 21st century, and is subject to reforms issued by its governing body, the California Supreme Court.
Leonard Irving Weinglass was a U.S. criminal defense lawyer and constitutional law advocate, best known for his defense of participants in the 1960s counterculture. He was admitted to the bar in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and California. He taught criminal trial advocacy at the University of Southern California Law School from 1974 to 1976, and at the Peoples College of Law, in Los Angeles, California from 1974 to 1975.
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Chol Soo Lee was a Korean American immigrant who was wrongfully convicted for the 1973 murder of Yip Yee Tak, a San Francisco Chinatown gang leader, and sentenced to life in prison. While in prison, he was sentenced to death for the killing of another prisoner, Morrison Needham, though Chol Soo claimed self-defense. Chol Soo served ten years of his sentence for the killing of Yip Yee Tak, of which he was later acquitted, eight of those on death row. Investigative reporting by K. W. Lee sparked the formation of the Free Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee, which spurred a national pan-Asian movement. Chol Soo finally won his freedom in 1983 through the help of the Free Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee and Tony Serra.
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For Serra, representing Shrimp Boy is an honor and a privilege. This is the type of case that any politically inclined lawyer — this is your holy grail, he said. This is a government-created crime.
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