Colorful SF lawyer will be Tabish’s lead trial counsel

Thursday, July 17, 2003 | 9:37 a.m.

Another prominent criminal defense attorney has agreed to participate in the new murder trial of Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish in the 1998 death of gaming figure Ted Binion.

San Francisco lawyer J. Tony Serra, a pony-tailed liberal who calls himself a "creation of the '60s," said Wednesday he will be Tabish's lead counsel. He joins Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz, who will be assisting Murphy's defense.

"This case we're going to win," Serra said Wednesday in a telephone interview from San Francisco. "We've got a guy who's not guilty, so I'm completely jacked up."

Among Serra's high-profile clients is Sara Jane Olson, a former Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive who was tried on bombing charges in 2001.

Serra said one of his first orders of business will be to consider filing a motion to move the trial out of Las Vegas.

"I think a new venue would clear the air of a lot of misconceptions that emanated out of the last trial," he said.

But Serra added that he will not move to disqualify District Judge Joseph Bonaventure from the retrial. Last year Serra unsuccessfully tried to prevent Bonaventure, who presided over the first trial, from hearing post-conviction defense motions.

Serra, however, said he now wants Bonaventure to stay.

"He knows the case inside and out," Serra said. "I think it makes it exciting, unpredictable and increases the passion for all involved."

Serra, who said he's receiving a "modest fee" to defend Tabish, said he supports his client's desire to take the witness stand at the retrial, something both Tabish and Murphy declined to do at the first trial.

Serra explained that the defense intends to operate under the theory that the 55-year-old Binion, a known drug abuser, died of an overdose.

Prosecutors contend Murphy and Tabish forced Binion to take heroin and Xanax and then suffocated him.

Murphy and Tabish were convicted of killing Binion on May 19, 2000, following a seven-week trial carried live on local and national television.

Binion's body was found next to an empty bottle of Xanax on the floor of his 2408 Palomino Lane home on Sept. 17, 1998. His house had been looted of its valuables, including a $300,000 collection of antique currency and coins. Two days later Tabish and two other men were arrested on theft charges in Pahrump after they had dug up Binion's $6 million silver fortune from an underground vault.

Serra's commitment to defend Tabish at the new trial comes as Clark County District Attorney David Roger said his office will ask the Nevada Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to overturn the murder convictions of Murphy and Tabish.

Earlier in the week Roger said the chances of persuading the court to take another look at its decision were not good.

But on Wednesday he sounded more optimistic.

"We reviewed the issues addressed by the court, and we feel there are legal grounds to ask them to reconsider their decision," Roger said.

He declined to explain the approach his office will take in its motion for a rehearing.

Chief Deputy Jim Tuftland, who heads the district attorney's Appellant Division, is preparing the motion, which is expected to be filed in Carson City in the next two weeks.

In overturning the convictions, the Supreme Court said Bonaventure erred by allowing Tabish to be tried on unrelated extortion charges at the trial. The court said the extortion charges, which involved an assault by Tabish against Jean sand pit operator Leo Casey two months before Binion's death, prejudiced the murder case against Murphy and Tabish.

Bonaventure, the court said, also improperly allowed the hearsay evidence from Binion's lawyer James J. Brown, who testified that Binion told him the day before he died that he wanted to cut Murphy out of his will before she killed him.