J. Tony Serra — the ponytailed, pot-smoking criminal defense attorney famous for fighting the government and celebrated in the 1989 film "True Believer" is Lambasted by Federal Judge as he failed to show up or even notify the court that he would not be there.
Sentencing of an El Dorado County couple on charges of conspiring to grow and distribute marijuana was aborted Thursday in Sacramento federal court when flamboyant defense lawyer J. Tony Serra did not show up.
Schafer and Fry face a mandatory minimum five years in prison after a jury in August found them guilty of conspiring to grow and distribute at least 100 pot plants at their offices in Cool and their home in Greenwood.
Damrell
fumed at Lichter, then summoned Schafer to the podium.
"Do you see that door?" Damrell asked Schafer, who replied that he did see the side door of the courtroom indicated by the judge.
"It
leads to a holding cell," Damrell said. "If I sentence you, this may
be your last day of freedom for a long time. And your attorney is not even here.
What do you think of that?"
...The 70-year-old Serra has represented — with mixed results — Black Panther leader Huey Newton, the Hells Angels, Symbionese Liberation Army soldier turned soccer mom Sara Jane Olson and hundreds of murderers and drug dealers driven to the fringes, he says, by sociopolitical forces.
In 2005, the San Francisco criminal defense lawyer Tony Serra was sentenced to ten months in jail for failing to pay income taxes. "I would rather get down with inmates," Serra rang out in the oratory style — part poetry, pure conviction — that helped make his mark in court. "They're interesting, they're dramatic, they've overstepped the bounds of society. Some of it is high principle; some of it is low principle. But these people are extraordinary. They're not ordinary. These are my people!"
Read more about the conviction of Greenwood's Schafer & Fry
Go To Tony Serra's Law Office Website
