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Tony Serra: There was a revolution, and the Haight-Ashbury was bursting at that point. In the Haight you had the music, the drugs, and the people coming from all over the world to dance in the street. All these communes were popping up, and you had preachers who were preaching, in a sense, Eastern theology. It was a very fecund period sociologically, epistemologically, spiritually. Those movements, those spiritual outcries, permeated my being. So I became a hippie on one side, dropping LSD, dancing till 2 in the morning, like a dance freak at all of the concerts. The Dead was starting, Jefferson Airplane was starting, Santana was starting. The major groups were here, in the vortex of the Haight-Ashbury, and there was all of the political maneuvering over at Berkeley and SF State. So out of all of that, probably during an acid trip, I decided to take an informal vow of poverty.See, I'm not materialistic by birth, by propensity, by DNA, so it's not like I ever gave up anything. So it was easy. I owned nothing.Why did you stop paying taxes?
I did not believe in taxation because it exploits the working class—it started when you were defeated by an army. When you were defeated by the Roman Army, they would impose a tax on you. It's always been economically or militarily oppressed people who pay taxes, so I refused to pay taxes. As you know, I've gone to prison. I've suffered three separate convictions. Every decade they bring me in, and twice I've gone to prison. But not for long though; it doesn't affect my practice of the law. The California Bar is very empathetic [Laughs].
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Could you tell me about some of your famous cases? Maybe what it was like to work with Huey Newton and the Black Panthers?"It's always been economically or militarily oppressed people who pay taxes, so I refuse to pay them."
Huey had been charged with the murder of a prostitute. It was an absurd proposition to begin with and, you know, someone had driven up in the car that he was chauffeured around with, not him. So there were a number of prostitutes on the street. One was called over, and shot, I think, by someone in the back seat of that car. And, as a number of prostitutes variously described, it was like a joke. "Oh, he had a hat on." "Oh, he didn't have a hat on." "His hair was ballooned out." "No, his head was shaven." There were so many different images. But the main [witness] identified him without hesitation. And so predicated on that real thin type of evidence, they went to trial. So it turned out the main witness against him, she had actually been in jail. At the time of the homicide she wasn't on the streets. So we triumphed.And how I met Huey was sleeping in the Panther houses. They had been expecting a raid by the police. Back then you could still have rifles, only concealed weapons were prohibited. So the Panthers became armed, and there were sand bags. When I went, they would strip you naked, make sure you weren't an agent, or recording them. But I wasn't, of course, and they saw that I was idealistic. Huey himself was very charismatic, he's one of the most charismatic human beings that I've had the privilege of being close [to] at one point. This was before he became kind of an addict and was ultimately assassinated by some drug dealer—there's still controversy over really what happened. But I had him in the prime of his youth and his mind was good.
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I can't really get into specifics, but every time we have a case that involves a gang person, they'll add gang enhancements to dirty them up, because society rejects them. The dominant society that is symbolized in a jury rejects them. All you have to do is say "gang," and there's no credibility attached to the defense or the witnesses that come forward who are gang members. So you're not in court. If you've got a gang case, sometimes you think you're in trial and you're not in trial because of the societal rejection of the whole phenomenon. If police point a finger—as they say, you can convict a ham sandwich under those circumstances. As far as my trial, we did good. We hung it, solid hang. 6-6. I won't go into particulars, but in my opinion my client should have been acquitted, my client didn't do anything.
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Ever since 9/11, jurors are prosecution/law enforcement-aligned. Fear dominates their lives. They are afraid of domestic terrorists, gangs, serial killers, psychopaths, and felons. They believe that law enforcement protects them from the chaos and the dissidents. They are willing to give up all constitutional rights so as to be safe from perceived harm. A lawyer in a trial cannot attack police officers and their credibility as we did previously; we cannot derogate the snitch; we cannot claim police entrapment or police brutality. The jurors are not listening to us in those areas. As a consequence, we lose cases that we would have won before 9/11.What do you make of the recent high-profile instances of police brutality across the country?
Obviously, it's in all of our consciousness: What's been happening for generations, for decades, is that police are violent to people. They even sometimes plant a throwaway gun. For the most part, over the years, they got away with it, because we couldn't catch them, so to speak, en flagrante delicto. But now because everyone has these phones, these cameras in their phones, we're catching them. We're catching them, you know, even on a gun case with a body that's been shot from the back. And the brutality of four or five or six standing around and kicking someone, or beating them to death, or throwing them in paddy wagons driving them over whatever bumps and turns so that they get banged around in the back. Law enforcement, not at all levels and not all people, attracts sadists. Because as a law enforcement officer, you can inflict pain, especially as a jailer, and it's considered OK.
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What is your thought process like in court?Law enforcement often attracts sadists. Because as a law enforcement officer, you can inflict pain, especially as a jailer, and it's considered OK.
Delineated and focused. I must throw my "semantic spears" fast and accurately. I'm like an eagle concentrating only on the kill. One cannot really be good as a trial attorney unless he or she has somewhat of a photographic memory: no notes, no reading, always standing, passionate and assertive. I'm one of the last of a dying breed. Most defense lawyers are negotiators nowadays. They are ultimately compromisers. I'm not!
It's so important. I applaud it, I rejoice it. Demonstrations are something that we still have. We still have the free speech and the constitutional principle that allows people to protest. So peaceful protests, demonstrations, it has always been the American way to reform injustice. It's the people, it's democracy, it is the people surging up and demanding a change, and exposing, ultimately, the hypocrisy of government, and the lack of integrity on many occasions with regard to government and law enforcement.We're drifting, do you understand, we're drifting toward totalitarianism. Through our law, through law enforcement and through all of the money, through lobbyists that are behind some of the laws that law enforcement utilizes against us. So if there is no protest, there is no real avenue to the heartbeat of a democracy. So I encourage protest. I encourage people getting together and exposing the—whatever you want to call it—the conduct of law enforcement, the conduct of politicians, the conduct of military, the conduct of [the] CIA. It is a welcome thing in democracy, and I hope that it increases.This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.Follow Jocelyn Silver on Twitter.