Serra dropped from Tabish team

Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 | 9:30 a.m.

Only a week before Rick Tabish is scheduled for sentencing, he has severed ties with attorney J. Tony Serra and is expected to hire Bruce Cutler, a lawyer who won three cases for East Coast mob boss John Gotti.

Tabish's attorney, Joe Caramagno, said Serra's departure from the legal team "came up in the last month or so" due to Serra having other obligations, not because Tabish was unhappy with his performance.

"This is not a matter of Rick (Tabish) not being happy with him (Serra), it's quite the opposite,' Caramagno said. "We feel he was the go-to guy at trial for us. It's just Tony ) is in such high demand and goes from trial to trial and couldn't meet the demands of coming back to Las Vegas to argue the motions we plan to present during appeal."

Serra could not be reached for comment this morning.

Caramagno said he told Tabish that Cutler was a "long-time friend" and Tabish told him to try to bring him aboard. Caramagno said he is currently working to finalize the deal to hire Cutler.

Caramagno said he would be asking District Judge Joe Bonaventure to reschedule sentencing for Tabish and co-defendant Sandy Murphy due to the attorney change. The sentencing had been set for Jan. 28.

On Nov. 23 a Clark County jury acquitted Tabish and Murphy of murdering Ted Binion but found them guilty of conspiring to commit burglary and/or larceny as well as guilty of burglary and grand larceny.

Caramagno has said an upcoming appeal would ultimately rest on sworn testimony given by former Nye County Sheriff Wade Lieseke in a civil case that contradicts what he testified to during the trial.

Caramagno said additional affidavits given by Nye County deputy sheriffs after the trial also contradict Lieseke. He said if the District Attorney's office had this information and withheld it, that would have been a violation of the law.

Caramagno said it was currently unclear whether the district attorney's office was privy to the affidavits in question.

Nye County deputies wound up arresting Tabish, his employee Mike Milot and David Mattsen, manager of Binion's Pahrump ranch, for burglary.

In his testimony Lieseke acknowledged that Tabish called him three times the day after Binion's death, but Lieseke said Tabish never told him, as Tabish said he did, that he was going to Pahrump to dig up Binion's silver. Tabish contends that he was going to preserve the silver for Binion's daughter Bonnie.

Lieseke said Tabish never told him he was fulfilling Binion's wishes by unearthing Binion's $7 million worth of silver from his underground vault in Pahrump.

Additionally Lieseke said Tabish told him that "Ted liked me (Lieseke) quite a bit" and had left $250,000 in his will for Lieseke. He said he didn't believe Tabish because while Lieseke was friends with Ted, he was not close enough to merit that kind of a gift.

With the convictions on three theft counts, Tabish and Murphy each face anywhere from probation to a maximum of 21 years in prison at their Jan. 28 sentencing, according to Clark County District Attorney David Roger. Roger said conspiracy to commit burglary is a gross misdemeanor and carries a maximum sentence of one year at the Clark County Detention Center.

The maximum sentence for burglary is 10 years and the grand larceny conviction carries a sentence of one to 10 years.

In 2000 Tabish and Murphy were convicted of murdering Binion, but were granted a retrial after the Nevada Supreme Court overturned their convictions.

Prosecutors at both trials alleged Tabish and Murphy suffocated 55-year-old Binion on Sept. 17, 1998, and tried to make it look like a drug overdose. A day later Tabish tried to steal Binion's silver in Pahrump, prosecutors said.

The defense lawyers contended that Binion died of an accidental overdose of heroin, Xanax and Valium and that Tabish was simply following Binion's orders when he tried to recover and preserve the silver for Binion's daughter.

Tabish is currently serving an 18- to 120-month prison sentence for a kidnapping and extortion conviction that stemmed from the 1998 beating of a man at a sandpit in Jean

Murphy's attorney, Michael Cristalli, said Murphy is in California where she is doing administrative work for William Fuller, the octogenarian mining executive who posted her bail and financed her defense at the re-trial.