Tony Serra

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J. Tony Serra is an American attorney, activist and tax resister.

1 Education
2 Biography
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Education

A graduate of UC-Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, Serra was educated during the rise of the Counter-cultural Movement of the 1960s.

[edit] Biography

He was the subject of the 1989 movie True Believer about a Chinatown (San Francisco) murder case in which he won an acquittal for Chol Soo Lee, the defendant. He also successfully defended Black Panther leader Huey Newton in a murder trial, and represented individuals from groups as diverse, and politically charged, as the White Panthers, Hells Angels, Earth First!, New World Liberation Front (NWLF). Some of these individuals include Brownie Mary,Dennis Peron, Hooty Croy, Ellie Nestor, and Symbionese Liberation Army members Sara Jane Olson, Russell Little and Michael Bortin. Serra, in 2004, won an acquittal during a retrial on murder charges for co-defendant Rick Tabish in the death of casino mogul Ted Binion.[1]

Tony Serra won the Trial Lawyer of the Year award in 2003 (by the organization Trial Lawyers for Public Justice), for his successful litigation of Judi Bari against the FBI. ^[1]

He has frequently been in trouble with the law for failure to pay taxes, and is known for living a frugal lifestyle and driving a run-down car. On July 29, 2005, he was sentenced to 10 months of federal prison, to be served in Lompoc, and ordered to pay $100,000 in restitution for a misdemeanor conviction for willful failure to pay taxes ^[2]. Serra was released from a federal camp in Lompoc, California, in mid February 2007, reporting immediately to a halfway house in San Francisco. He was released from federal custody on March 13, 2007 after serving out his sentence [2]. With the help of three other attorneys, he has filed a class action suit in order to get minimum wage for himself and other inmates. ^[3]

Tony Serra's younger brother is the famed American sculptor Richard Serra. Richard, a successful artist, paid for the college education of Tony's five children.