Columnist Jeff German: Binion retrial: deja vu

Friday, Oct. 15, 2004 | 10:52 a.m.

If I didn't know any better, I'd swear we've been living in a time warp the past four years.

It seemed like deja vu at the courthouse, all right, as lawyers delivered opening statements Thursday in Binion 2 before a live television audience and a media-packed courtroom.

Sure, there were new faces at the prosecution and defense tables, but the same familiar stars we loved to watch four years ago were back for a repeat performance. And they stayed in character.

There was Sandy Murphy, dressed in designer clothes, frequently whispering in the ear of her lawyer, Michael Cristalli, in court and flitting around in the hallway during breaks with friends and family members.

There was Rick Tabish, her cool-headed former lover who sat expressionless among his four lawyers and often took notes, as clean-cut prosecutors outlined a circumstantial case for murder against the couple.

And there was District Judge Joseph Bonaventure, the jovial but hot-tempered presiding judge, who lectured an alternate juror for being an hour late to court and holding up the opening day curtain.

Even Ted Binion, the colorful casino executive who prosecutors alleged met his demise at the hands of Murphy and Tabish, was on hand. Both sides showed the 12-member jury a gruesome police photo of Binion's body, dressed in his underwear, lying on a mat in the den of his Las Vegas home the day he was found dead.

The jurors, seven men and five women, mostly middle-aged, listened intently and jotted down notes, as a stone-faced Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Lalli methodically laid out the prosecution's case with the help of a PowerPoint presentation for nearly 2 1/2 hours.

It's a case of lust, betrayal and greed that is identical to the one Lalli's predecessor, District Attorney David Roger, presented four years ago. Lalli charged that Tabish and Murphy killed the 55-year-old gambling figure for his riches, pumping him with drugs and then suffocating him.

But the jurors also got their first taste of well-known San Francisco lawyer J. Tony Serra who, smart as he is, really does appear to be living in a time warp. He's representing Tabish.

Serra, a 60-something product of the hippie generation, has won murder acquittals for several militant radicals over the years, including Black Panther Huey Newton.

With his long silver hair wrapped in a pony tail and dressed in a light gray suit with a flower-patterned tie, Serra provided a stark contrast to the short-haired, baby-faced Lalli, who maintained a serious look for the jurors in his navy blue business suit.

Demonstrative and often raising and lowering his voice for courtroom effect, Serra, though at times rambling, ripped into the prosecution's case, charging that Binion was not the victim of a homicide but, rather, a self-induced drug overdose.

Serra told the jurors he planned to take the high road and didn't want to demean the hard-drinking, heroin-addicted Binion -- at one point calling him "my kind of guy."

He also said he didn't plan to throw mud at the Binion family, which did a private investigation into Binion's death that led authorities to charge Murphy and Tabish.

But Serra spent most of his 1 1/2-hour opening statement doing both things, just as defense lawyers did four years ago.

He contended the evidence will show that Binion, through his heroin use, was systematically poisoning himself, and that after his death his powerful family conducted an "old-fashioned vendetta" to make sure Murphy was cut out of any inheritance.

Lalli, on the other hand, concluded: "The evidence will show that Ted Binion was murdered because (Sandy) Murphy and Rick Tabish wanted him dead."

I know I've heard that somewhere before.