LUST FOR JUSTICE-Paulette Frankl and J. Tony Serra

Lust for Justice, the radical life and Law of j Tony Sarah is a no holds barred examination of the man, his renegade lifestyle, his resolute beliefs, and the legal system he serves and transforms. Filled with murder, drugs, and death penalty cases, snitches, the psychological elements of crime, the nullification of nexus with juries, closing arguments in more. Lust for Justice pulls the black robe off the justice system to reveal what it is. A Railroad to Prison for Minorities.

Author and artist Paulette Franco follow Tony Sarah in and out of the courtroom for more than a decade to capture in words and images this man who embodies justice and drama at their best in Lust for Justice, to view the law through the eyes of one of its greatest practitioners, and you'll never look at it the same way again. The focus of our program this evening is the book Lust for Justice with my special guest, artist and author Paul Atte Frankel, the Radical Life and Law

of Jay Tony Sarah. And with me joining Paul Atte Frankel is Jay Tony Sarah or Tony Sarah. Welcome to the program, Jay Tony Sarah and Paul Atte Frankel, and thank you for ingredient to this interview. Good evening, Tony, and good evening, Paulette, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.

arrived as an artist. In my own opinion, in my own eyes, I've made it kind of my purpose in life to follow him around and do that. And during a large trial, the l Nesler trial, which he invited me to attend, I asked him, Tony, where's the book. There's so much publicity and the media is all over this thing, and why is there no book about you? And he grumbled, as is his style, and so I said, let's do one art your words, and I fully expected

him to write the book, but he didn't. He eventually just threw boxes and boxes and boxes of newspaper clippings and tape recordings and photos and sort of shards of his life at me and said here, it's your baby. I don't have time, and I felt like I'd just been swallowed by an avalanche. So that's basically how it began.

from New York at a very young age. In New York as an Ireland you know, off of Spain and Mediterranean, never applied for citisenship. So I don't know in that sense, and maybe in a limited sense one I identified with proletariat. I identified with Union at an early age, identified with immigrant,

identified with bilingual. It's been a life long identification that I have what's what used to be called proletariat class, and proletariat class most of the time is victim, you know, of the broader society or the dominant, let's call it a milieu of the society. So I think at an early stage I was robustly anti establishment, anti authority, anti

law enforcement, anti in penology, anti criminal prosecution. You know, I just quickly adhere to a very negative, almost neolistic view pertaining to stablishments, principles and more rays behavior, the distribution of wealth, et cetera, et cetera. So oddly I got good grades, so I was almost straight A through high school, and I was an athlete, and so I went down to Stanford and actually became more intellectual and less athletic. But I did box and give my life.

I played on the football team. I played on the baseball team. I did all of them poorly, but I continued that. But at the same time I became a philosophy major, specializing in epistemology and English Minor eighteen fifty

to nineteen hundred English literature. So there's this kind of you know, potential intellect academic lifestyle that could have somehow been out there, but somehow that was rejected readily, and so I found myself in North Africa kind of doing a hemiway thing, you know, romanticizing the fallacy of being the ex patriot, you know, writing from a foreign port with a foreign perspective, and I don't know, somehow, you know,

being accepted as a writer at that point. And it was ill found that I fell into a group that we're doing a lot of opiates and hashiuse, etc. And after a while I felt that my life had fallen kind of too much into sensualities and not enough academia

and not enough political content. So I applied at the University of California by mail in those days, and I went to Bolt Hall, which is UC Berkeley, and it was in the late fifties early sixties, and things were just starting to move At that time, we had the free speech movement, and we had you know, campus demonstrations. So I quickly absorbed that mentality and identified with that mentality.

And then I was a good student. I was near the top of my class, and so I was bright enough to write the briefs and bold enough to go into courts or right away when I started, I call it the Golden Age of law. I was represented the Black Panthers and the white Panthers. I represented the SLA. I represented the Black Gorilla Family. I represented Juie Newton himself after he returned from Cuban the murder case Russell Little of the SLA. I represented Jacques Roger of the

Newer Liberation Front. So I right away I started because San Francisco was just a complete, you know, political tornado at that time, and I was in the swirl of it. And so I practiced very vigorously. I was a pro bono lawyer. I've always been, you know, a pro bono lawyer. I take playing cases only to pay everything required to practice. I don't believe ultimately in profiteering from law. So I was very popular. I was very outsped. I as I look back, I you know, suffered more contempt charges than

any other lawyer in the area. I went to all the various jails on contempt to mostly connected with political causes. So I blossomed in the sixties into what's called a radical lawyer, and somehow I got hooked, you know, on jury trials. So I became a jury trial specialist and was known and still known, you know, so I don't even know fifty years later, as what they call a back to back jury person. That's like a public defender for life, you know, going to one trial after the next.

Not all weble some of them, you know, completely, what they call dead on arrival, but going for the hang, you know, going for the political element, going for the larger vision. And it's been very exciting. And you know, I'm getting up there in age and I'm still doing that very vigorously.

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at nearly seventy eight. But I'm still going like I did in the sixties, working six or seven days a week, you know, completely obsessed, completely, you know, possessed by the case and by the issues our office represents, you know, the occupiers, which I considered the most significant movement presently. We go, you know, to a number of cities in

northern California to do so. We take political cases. I still represent the Elf and Alf when the time arises, I represent people demonstrate in Berkeley, so in a way, I'm an extension still in the sixties. I have disavowed no ownership property, so I don't have real property, have an old car. I pay rent in the vicinity of about four hundred dollars a month. I have no real

material appetites. Therefore, frugal lifestyle and committed you know, to case after case and will do so, I guess until like Coachina, we're dire of a heart attack during the close in argument. That's the abbreviated history of me.

So tell us about the very first time that the case that you got invited to and we're talking about the Elie Nessler case, and what you were what you admired about his philosophy and saw that philosophy and application at this trial.

And so I was. I just kind of by dumb luck ended up in a courtroom while waiting for a friend to do finish a nursing exam, and it happened to be a good case. Most cases, or an awful lot of them, are so boring you just can hardly stay awake. But this was an exciting case and I started to sketch it. It was the first time I sketched in a courtroom, and I thought, this is great. I can do this. And a lawyer said, if you want drums, if it's drama you're looking for, Tony, Sarah's

your man. There's no one that can hold a candle to him. He's the law and drama at his best. He wears funky old clothes from the thrift, he has long hair, he gets up there without notes. He's incredibly perceptive, he's hard hitting, and he's just he's the one. He's the drama of the courtroom. So I tried to chase

him down, and it took me a year. People kept putting me off and sending me in on wrong directions, and I was in irritation to his office staff, and for some reason, I felt like life was blocking me from this, this great encounter with Tony Sarah. And finally, after a year, I did encounter him, and at that time I felt like maybe my skills were such that I could begin to draw him in a way that

would be meaningful. But even at that it took me a lot longer to be able to draw him in a way that really conveyed his energy and his passions. So the Eli and Nesler case was that was the first, big, big, big case. And I've forgotten what the rest of your question was.

footage of Tony in courts. So when we're talking drama, and then what I thought was interesting is the thing that you included is his again Maverick Cavalier techniques here that he includes and that you've included as sort of a well, this is what this is the lengths that he will go to, and these are the kinds of things that he employs, which is when you talk about letting his hair down and putting it in a ponytail one day and letting it run free and then and

talking it under, you know. So tell us a little bit about why you're saying that he's dramatic for those people who haven't seen any footage, And what do you mean by dramatic.

you know what's it like to be like that? To I feel like that? And more excitingly, to draw that. And in order for me to draw it, I had to perceive him in my own body structure so that I could draw from my gut and not from I don't know, just window shopping the situation. And so when Tony is representing a client, you get the feeling that

he's not holding back. And most lawyers feel like they're just sort of mouthing words that have a lot of sort of I don't know, high educational value, and if somebody is not an intellectual, they barely even understand what they're saying. But there's nothing not understandable about Tony. I mean, he's a wild man in court. He will go to the lengths of frothing at the mouth. It's really quite shocking, and I don't know that lighted me. I don't ask me why I like that. I like gorillas.

and pantomiming. So that's what I mean by drama too. That's very, very unusual for lawyers to get past their sort of staid composure to be able to start acting out the drama of a murder insay, for example, in a murder trial or some of the other trials that you included in the book.

something of that caliber, and he he is it. You know, you just get you get you get it, you get the idea of what's going on here.

and what the case represented to you. Please take us through the case briefly. What did it represent to you?

want to be politicized. I think while it was occurring she responded well. After the trial, I don't think she ever responded well again to the media and to the attention. She always insisted that God had talked to her and directed her and opened the door to allow her in during a recess, and had in essence interceded and compelled her to do the act. And what she wanted to do is emphasize that aspect. So one of my fortees has been defense that involved psychiatry. So obviously you have

not guilty by reason of insanity. Who have dismissals of cases in referring them to psychiatric wards when they're incompetent, you have what used to be called diminished the capacity, now called diminished actuality. You have Hello, it is.

shrink case. This is an eight shrink case where you put on experts, psychiatrists, after expert psychiatrists after expert psychiatrists. So it's one of my strengths, it's one of my fortes. So when you know, I heard that's what she wanted, and she wanted to discharge the other lawyer because he wanted to present an entirely different way. That excited me because I know that I've done that, I've worked with psychiatry.

The the you know, the weddings say of psychiatry and law for me has always been exciting and innovating and a frontier. So it was something I liked. That was one and two is that there was, you know, I don't know, a moral issue there which attracted everyone. This deceit was going to walk on rather herrendous molestation because

her child could not testify at a preliminary hearing. He was crying, he was wringing his hands, and when the u in customity defendant, the molester of the child, saw that, he sneered at them, and that was the sneer that broke her. You see, the sneer was the manifestation of his state of mind. And it was said to her, I'm gonna walk out of here and I'm gonna abuse your child. And that's when she flipped and that's when God spoke to her, and that's when she went out

to get the gun. And the court should have been closed, but magically it was open and no one was in it and only you know, the defendant, and he was handcuffed and she went up to him and she shot him and killed him. But she always thought she was fulfilling the will of God. So the fact you know that one there's this change the law which needed reform. Now in California where there's been victims child victims of sexual molestation, they can testify in a different room. They

don't have to look at the person. They can do it, you know, through video. So the reform was required. That kind of issue has to be aired. Psychiatric testimony was very profound. All aspects of the case were challenging. As I indicated, she became a media hero. She could go in front of a camera like she's learned. You know, her learning curve was straight up. She was dynamic. And then in no unfortunately she got cancer. She only did two years on the whole fence and she came out,

I think, like a different human being. And after that her life spiraled. So in a way, it was not a political case in a way. It was, you know, not my norm. But if it tracks, you know, people like poet because of the drama, there's sure as that was a lot of drama in that case. There was drama every minute in that particular case, and you know a lot of it was like an eighteen hour day.

a dysfunctional situation. So yeah, there's many people of that ilk and we have it instinctually as a remnant of past you know, survival techniques. So you know, that's the hot button, their vigilante justice, and she would be the last to claim that that was in her mind at the time.

she went out and got the gun. And so in many states, with many most lawyers, you've got to admit that this person, this woman would have been convicted of a first degree or a second degree murder. So you got her a really you had a victory with this. Tell us how you tell us a little bit more about how you approach the case knowing that this is the likelihood and how that jury.

you know the tell tale heart. I remember he goes up every night and he opens the door and he lets the lantern the light go on the eye like his uncle, but it was the eye, and he does it night after night, and then he finally goes in and kills the uncle. And then he buries the body behind the wall, under the floor. And you know, detectives come in years. And that's Larial Hardy. He's completely crazy. He's mad under any index of madness that the crime

was completely premeditated, deliberated. You know, it went over a number of days. There was perhaps the intervals of sanity, but nonetheless no one would you know, disagree that that man was insane. But there was premeditation and deliberation in his actions. So if you can convince that Jerry to follow the law. In this area, there can be premeditation deliberation in a psychotic state, in a complete psychotic break. You know, the criterion on the McNaughton is one, you

don't know the nature and quality of your behavior. Well, that wasn't her You know what the hell she was doing, We might infer. But the second leg is that you can't distinguish between right and wrong. And that's where she was really insane. God told her to do it. It wasn't her will, it wasn't her volition. He intervened, and that means that she thought she was doing God's will.

She thought she was doing the right thing, the good thing, the moral thing, and therefore she could not distinguish between right and wrong. Therefore she's insane. The premeditation deliberation don't count one bit. What really counts in those cases is what the shrinks say. It's our best index to legal insanity. You know, we don't throw them in the river any longer.

And if they float there, you know, sane, And if they you know whatever, if they go under and drown, their insane or cursed by God, or guilty of the offense, we don't do it any longer. We use psychiatry, and psychiatry is imperfect, but psychiatry is the best tool for proby mentality that we have right now.

and Bear Lincoln went free. And the thing that I found beautiful about this case was all the sort of side issues that went on with ceremony and drumming and the buckskin vest that was sown by aunties and put on every day in court and aired out every night to get rid of the vibrate, the bad vibrations of the court. And so there was just a tremendous amount of deep ceremony that attended this case and I found

it extremely moving. It was a death penalty case. Bear Lincoln shot and killed in self defense a sheriff, and there actually were two sheriffs, and it turned out that the sheriff that was shot and killed it turned out that it was friendly fire by his by we have his head off, and not Bear Lincoln at all. But just the fact that bar Lincoln was native was tantamount to guilt. So he was automatically considered a murderer and was facing the death penalty.

him for no reason. And that he also looted police and feared for his life. So tell us a little bit more about that, because that's a fascinating, fascinating drama. And this opens up the book two in chapter one.

and it's not the same as running out of guilt, it's just wanting to get the hell out of there because the white man's law has never done them any good and has been in act the source of all their problems and terrible history and the background. So anyway, I will pass this on to Tony to do the legal well.

at the time of the offense. So we hadn't here a duration where our client had fled, he had absconded, he ran from the scene. And there is a law that's well placed in California particularly, is utilized by prosecutors whenever they can. And it boils down to flight is an indicator, or they call it indisha. Flight's an indisha of guilty runaway, you must have a guilty mind. So using that as a focal point, very small microcosm within the case, we blew it up and we put on experts,

you know, from all walks of life. Harvard professors. State your name, you know, states his name, state their profession, state your specialty, you know, state what publications you have created in this specialty. And then at the end stay of crime. I can remember when say Papachi, and then you go into the history of the genocide and why they distrust white and why they always run for white. And he you know, at an early age when the

fleece reigned in the Indian compounds and the reservations. The children all run in the in the in the middle of the winter, you know, when the ground is snow and the river is partly frozen over. You have the children hiding from the police when they come there to you know, rest the father for for something you know, real or spurious. So there is great fear. So we had the Jerry Kayen. We put on weeks and weeks of the history of the genocide. They you know, they

killed ninety five percent of all of the Indians. They would bring in the scalps they were paying for Indian scalps. They ran out of money. They were given twenty five dollars, you know for every Indian you're killed, and they ran out of money. And the ones who used to kill Indians for scalps and for money would have to go in the Nevada to get their money. That's how we got on stories where the vigilante you know, whites, would go into an Indian camp. They'd kill all the men.

Then you know, they'd rape the woman and then they would take the babies and they would swing them around and smash them against the trees, and so you know, those are the kind of things that that we put in the jury's mind a mind you well, at the same time they're hearing these horrific tales and they're really

openly weeping. The whole court is surrounded by Native Americans, a small court in near Caya, California, whole fashion court, and they're drumming and they're chanting and they're singing, and there, you know, utilizing every effort to infect, don't trade the court room, to impregnate the jury with their passion and

their fury. Because he was truly innocent. It turns out, just as Paul Hat said, turns out that it was the gun fire of his fellow officer who killed him, that it wasn't my client at all, and therefore he was truly factually innocent. So it was, you know, a fabulous case. We were smoked. And that means that before you go into court, the court room, we were allowed because it's an Indian religious ceremonial act that's allowed, like you can being you know, a Bible or a religious

book into court, and so he was allowing that. So the lawyers would go into the holding cell, the holy person would come in and we would be smoked, and we would be tunted upon and we would be prayed for, and then we walked out and there would be the jury. We were still the smoke is coming off of our clothes. You know, they could feel the strength of the religious

ceremony at that point. I don't think that's ever happened, you know, ever, to be smoked in court prior to court commencing, and you know where they can see him, smell it and feel it the jury and then outside the chanting and the drums beating and seeming like the whole court, you know, it was vibrating. We knew early that we would never ever lose. You can always hang anything, you know, I can hang it for you or against you, But we would never lose because one is, I think

we showed overwhelmingly that he was actually innocent. And two is the cultural defense so sensitizes you, so you know, it creates ultimately this this profound empathy, this complete you know, guilt feeling about the fact that the Indians were genocided that when it's relevant, it's overwhelming. And you know, I've put the three things together, the presence of the Indians, the drummings, and their ceremony and their presence in court and the presence of the Holy people and the presence

of their prayers. One. Two, the fact that he was actually innocent. Three the cultural defense. And it was very triumphant. It was a great case, and it was very significant to the Native Americans because once again they had extended, they had extended to white man's law. White man's law. You know, for them, justice means just us, that is white and they've never been treated equally, and they've never been given a break, and they've never really been understood,

and they don't want to be part of it. And once again they you know, put their heart in their mind into the process and once you know, symbolically they were rewarded this particular case. It stands ultimately for you know, white man justice on one occasion, jury justice on one

occasion for wrongfully charged Native American. And there's so many Native Americans and other minorities who I can't ultimately get railroaded because they don't have good lawyers, because no one will fight for them, because they're stereotyped, because they're ultimately outcast in our culture. So it was you know, a very strong symbolic political case.

this country. Yet you know purports to be egitarian. The democratic process for everyone that has utterly failed because just what you said, if you have a good lawyer, your chances are extremely better than if you have mediocre lawyer. If you have the resources to get the experts and the resources to get the investigation, and the resources to get the witnesses. Your chances are enhanced, and poor people

don't have those resources. Public defenders' offices, you know, as good as they are and as idealistic as most of them are, do not have the resources. They're over work, they don't have enough money. They can't really do a case like a private lawyer with resources. So you know in a sense that we need more pro bono lawyers. And you know there's constant movement to create in the large office section that would do pro bonal work. But it isn't enough to be pro bono just what you said.

You've got to have the experience. And the experience comes, you know, from throwing yourself into one case after the next. And I always don't like that. I can remember when I first started, you know, I'm like a public center. I go to law it's starting to trial every week in the old days. Now they take longer. But would come up.

of poverty. I don't believe in owning private property. I don't believe in, you know, the probate system where you can pass it on. I don't believe incorporations for all of the obvious reasons. I don't believe in income tax. As you know, I'm the lifelong time protester, having been convicted three times of non you know, payment or late payment or failure to pay, and not moralterpitude, not felonious,

you know. So my bar license remains with me. But I early decided if if if something's valuable and it's ideological to you, to you, it's relativistic, then materialism interfused with that, I'm free to be compulsive, obsessive about the cases, about whom I represent, about the ideology of the person I represent. You know, that's my world, that's my microcosm.

And I don't have to worry about stocks and bonds and what the percent of interest is and you know whether the stock market is doing well, and you know what the housing market, you know what it's status is or what that is completely eliminated. I don't sit on the weekend on some fancy you know boat. I don't take you know, expensive meals, very frugal. Maybe I distinguish myself, you know, with oldoes and used clothes and clothes that

don't fit me and things like that. And part of that maybe was calculated, but it's them from the fact I took a vowel, and I don't buy anything new. I haven't bought anything new in fifty years. I guess, you know, normally their ties, and I have a zillion ties. I put them all over the wall, them off eat the ones that are ediblew but beyond ties, I don't know if I have any any things. You know, I've never valued things, and so I don't collect, you know,

anything of value. I collect the matchboxes, I collect eyes. I guess I don't know if I collect anything else. I collect victories. You know. That's that's my passion, you know is I always say not guilty or the two holiest words in jurisprudence. So it's it's not guilty, is what you know? I pursue that. That's my banner.

is creativity and vision. And one of the things that Tony brings to court that I find absolutely hair raising is his way of pulling out of a gruesome situation of the trial of the case, a particular detail or or set of details that sets it apart and makes is it becomes an argument an unto itself, and then the prosecution has to deal with that. And you know, many lawyers just plod on the information. They're basically muskoxes

on a poll going in circles. And a person of Tony's caliber, of which unfortunately there are very few, if any, he has a vision and he's able to He's able to pull out the details to create a case around certain elements that somebody else wouldn't think about. And this is what this is one of the things that gives him his power.

don't let me quote you. But how do you other than okay, this is a cause that I believe in. How do you approach every single client in terms of their guilt?

Now there comes a time, and it can be very early or very late on that decision and whether put the client on or not right, And obviously then you have to go into the matters deeper. Why previously it was only for purpose across examination and to obtain witnesses on your behalf and you know, subpoena evidence, investigate aspects of the case. But see are you know he's going to be examined on every issue. So I kind of

do it like a prosecutor does it. I say, these are going to be the kind of question he's going to be asked, and I'll go at them like I'm a prosecutor. And the first time, I don't even ask him to answer. I want them to know what they're going to be subjected to, and then you know, later i'll see their answers. It's not my progative to grade them and you know, change them or anything. But you know, I won't take a case, at least nowadays, where I don't have a strong belief in some factors that will

allow for acquittal. I'm not going to take, you know, but I do. I say that, and then I do. I'm not taking these dogs or these dead on arrivals. And you know how you put so much emotion and so much of your psyche into it, and how crushing it is to lose when every day of trial merely is another nail in your client's coffin, and you never, the lawyer, never recover. So there's always something I strongly believe in, and that's what I want to, you know,

bring out. It can be moral, it can be legal, it can be factual, it can be mitigating, it can be psychiatric. And as Filette says, you got to get passionate about that. You have to emote about that, You have to convey that. That has to obliterate everything else that has to overcome reason and logic. You know, we the defense bar we are in you know, the sub cerebral.

We're not in the cerebral. We would lose all, you know, many many more cases if we operated in the so called rational cerebral order, the logical you know, sequence, et cetera. The reasonable inference. So we have to we have to mote and we have to remote around an issue that can be reasonable doubt. And in terms of what the client did and did not you have to emphasize obviously you know the issue that one has emotional content, second moral content, and third you know is true and four

is enough to influence the jury. Understand that most cases have a large, large aspect of during nullification. So those are the kind of issues, the moral issues, you know, the issues that may not relate directly to guilt or innocence, but the moral kind of background or the you know, the high calling of some of the behavior. Those are where the jury starts to be vulnerable. And that is the defense in the territory. So I know, going back to just answering it blank. If I walked in and

say did you do it? Or did you you know, not do it? Most cases aren't did you do it or did you not do it? Most cases are self defense, psychiatric defense, you know, no identification. They're not like mysteries, They're not like you know, there's going to be during the trial, the uncovering of some evidence that points to the real culprit, which you know is the pop kind of scenario I believe in this television wise, so you know, it's a different methodology than people would expect.

Tell us a little bit more about the putting together of this book.

I followed him around, I was, I guess. I mean, it wasn't really a groupie because there weren't too many other people doing it. But I just I wanted to get deeper and deeper and deeper into what makes this man tick and why and how is it that someone who is so dynamic in court, how does he get through life? Does he send Christmas cards? Does he you know? Is he a good driver? Does he wears heatbelts? I mean,

how does he deal with the normalcies of life? Because his energy was just so bigger than life in court, and is I don't see any diminishment of that even now. And so I became deeper involved. And as I said, I never intended to be writing the book, but since it got thrown at me, I sort of embraced it, even though I didn't know what on earth I was doing. Written a book before. And I have to do a

little bragging here. It's been on Amazon's bestseller list for a year now in the digital version, which I'm quite proud of. But anyway, it was a bear. It was a bitch. It was difficult every inch and every step of the way, and Sony, understandably so became, I guess, set up with the fact that it was taking forever. And you know, there comes a time where you no longer believe in the project and you think, well, she's just messing around. This is never going to happen. But

I was ruminating. My river kind of went underground. I was trying to figure out how to put together his life, his law, who I perceived him to be as a person, and bring it all into some sort of manageable form. And I must say I was sailing rather miserably until I came across this wonderful editor, Dick Castleman, who was able to see the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest. I'm not sure which way his works.

And I find it personally very empowering because Tony is a person who had I've never experienced him to have fear. He has concerns for his clients, but he doesn't he goes rangels fear to tread, and you know most of us don't, don't dare.

during nullification. And I would get a recorder in the old fashion and the tape, smoke a joint and just you know, glither blather away, kind of what I call semantic dribble, and then give her the tape and never, you know, for seventeen years, I don't know what she's doing with it. Then on other occasions, I you know, doing you know, I've been doing the fifties. She followed me around for ten and took another seven to finish it.

But in that ten I was making speeches all over and so I'd be up on some podium ready to give a talk to lawyers about you know, some subject matter, and there she coming. She put the recorder right in front of me. Oh, I'd give her kind of like, well, you know, a bad stare, because when you have a recorder right in front of it, you start to be more particular, more watchful in your language, and maybe not

as spontaneous, but you know, I could overcome it. And then closing our And she was always there and in case after case, she was the courtroom artist, and she is the one talk about a breath of fresh air. You know, most of the court room artists' work is what we'll call representational. She was what I call this is naively stated impressionistic for instant. If I pointed at someone,

she would make five arms pointing. You know, if I made a gesture, she would exaggerate the gesture, or she would exaggerate, you know, the flinging of my hair or a scowl, or a manifestation of anger in the like she would give me in their drawings, like more power by the way she would repeat the themes. She was cherished by the judicial system, the lawyers a of her works on my cases, on cases you know that had no real publicity. They would buy her work, they would

put it on television. And you know, when she left after ten years, she was missed in the courts. And I kept telling her, don't keep following me around. Go get in the Jerry Spence, Go get a lawyer from the east, from the South, Go get you know, Philadelphia lawyer, getting New York lawyer, and do a big book on all of us. And you know it should be your work.

Her work is so compelling, and she, you know, is a great artist, you know, in rather Ela quint a writer, and it's her gift and has made from my perspective me, Sal's ear at best into a silk person. I'm very you know, respectful of her.

quite interesting. But the difficult the difference between being a court room artist and I don't know, another kind of artist is that you don't have time to consider anything. You just for me anyway. I have to be slammed by the impact of what I'm seeing and then I have to hold that vision. And this is very much like Tony's photographic memory and how he how he as he calls it. I think rams are jams through his mind the night before the trial, vast amounts of details.

And as an artist, I have to do the same thing because to me, the art has to tell a story and it has to it has to. I have to speak from my gut, just as I received it

from his gut. So it's kind of I don't know, a boomerang thing or something, and I have to hold that image long enough to draw it, and on one occasion I even held it five hours when he suffered the verdict of the l Ensler's trial a second as the second phase of the trial, Tony was absolutely wiped out, and this image of him in defeat was just impacted me so strongly. He obviously didn't want to have anything

to do with anybody. I had a camera on my shoulder, but I thought he'd rear up and I don't know, punch me. I dared to in some way disturb his depression at that moment, So I held that vision in my mind for five hours until I got home and was able to draw it. It's, you know, it's a special knack, and I don't know that I still have it because I haven't done court room art since. Actually I did it for a while in Las Vegas, but

most court room art really bores me. And I thought I would love to get commissions from other people, but never did. And the fact of the matter is Tony is the lawyer who has caught my eye and held my interest, and I would do it again. But it's not every lawyer that I that I have that kind of connection with.

It's not everything to you, but it's certainly a belief. Now, what's very another thing that's very close to your heart and very strong you have a very very strong opinion, is about lawyers who would defend snitches as you call them rats informants and your decimation of an informant and your technique used in decimating the informant at trial against

your clients. So, first tell us what your personal philosophy is towards this and the lawyers that may represent them, and then tell us how you and why you use the techniques to basically deal with these clients and they're and informants and the kind of cases that we're normally would have informants typically.

in their arena. So it's ever on the increase. Our country has more verbiage, more designation of informants, more law pertaining to informants than any other nation in the world. We have material informants, precipitent informance, participatory informants. We have a reliable informants, we have sources of information. We have informants who are citizen informants. We have paid informants. We have informants who work for leniency on their own case.

So there's a great variability in the ter in informance. Informant lawyers have cropped up because the government has coerced from my perspective so much from the criminal process which allows them to create these informants. So I have very very hard view. So it's at several letter levels. One, the individual receives the leniency, it doesn't ultimately benefit him. That person becomes a stranger in his own milieu. His friend's forsaken, his family frequently believed that he was cowardly

and not idealistic. He's constantly watching his back for repercussions. Many times he's relocated, so his life, you know, really ends and he never really starts again, and psychologically he's been destroyed. That's one. Two is that the system that reward snitches is flawed because they ultimately give you what

you want to hear. So if I went out pretend as a defense lawyer and I paid ten thousand dollars to a witness to say the car was green, and another twenty thousand to witness to say that my client was an into green car, you know, after the bank was robbed, I would be prosecuted, you know, rightfully for some morning perjury. It would be a disgrace. But with informants, the government does that every day. They give what is more precious than money. They give liberty, They give ten

years to this guy. They give twenty years off on this guy. They don't even charge this guy. This is a clandestine informant. You know, he's been recording people. We don't even charge him. So it tilts the scale. Ultimately, it's one sided. You start a trial, Oh, I can be one snitch, maybe I can be two snitches. But they'll roll the top on you, they'll road the side on you, they'll rode you from the bottom. You can't win.

So it's one step, you know, closer to a totalitarian government, a non adversarial system, and you know, ultimately then the whole system of justice, the truth seeking foundation for our system of justice, is destroyed. You cannot rely on informants in order to convict, even where you think you have corroboration. So it was the system. Lastly, you see, survival of the species is so strong in us. You know, we inherit the instinct and it has always been, you know,

the most greenious form of behaviors. To turn on your family, to turn on your tribe, you know, to turn on your government, to betray It's called the Judas syndrome. And the Judas syndrome is so strong we embedded in all of us because we rely on loyalty to evolve, you know, to serve, live, to propagate our our in seed, so to speak. And that's it. So it's a deep seated instinct. In wartime, if the soldier you know, kills whatever another soldier, you know, an act of treason, he's subject to the

death penalty. So it's always been the most genious form of conduct. And that's exactly the conduct that these informants and the informant system begets. So it ultimately, you know, vanquishes the people that the movement or the ideology that the informant once embraced. Of course that government likes that, but in the marketplace of ideas and in the marketplace of you know, different forms of behavior begetting different diferent norms,

different standards, different mores in society. We need all of that. We can't just uniform eyes. So you know, it's a multi fascinated attack. The basic bottom line is a performance. Do not tell the truth. They are you know, working for the objective of leniency or money, you know, cash.

They give money as well as leniency on occasion, and they will twist and deform what they you know, recall in order to please the prosecutor in order to get their prize, and the lawyers who represent snitches aid in the debt in that process, which ultimately destroys the basis you know of our criminal jurisprudence in the United States, so you know I don't like them at least five

different levels. And when you cross examine an informant, if the jury sees and field the disrespect you have, that the passion you know that you bring to bear on that disrespect. The use of the vernacular. You know, you're a at in the prison, seshm. Aren't you objection over rules of the judge? Yes, you're a rat, Yes, And you can't go home because no one respects you. You can't, you know, use your own name because that would identify you as a rat. You walk, you know, and tell

every day of your life. I yell and scream at him and I, you know, as poet says, I use vernacular. I don't use legal ease. The idea in court of using words is to communicate. And if you you still did language, if you're pedantic, if you want to show off your education or your special interests, say in psychiatry, it might sage for a moment or ego, but the juries turned off, and what I have found I exist

in the realm, you know, the motion. So when I go after these snitches, you can feel my hate and you can feel, you know, ultimately, my denouncement of them, and I think that is more powerful than their words. You got to know him, though. You got to know the snitch better than he knows himself. You got to

know every foul that he did. You have to interview the you know, the women he left behind, and the people that he cheated, and the people that he you know, sol drugs to, and the people that he may have robbed. And so you go in and you're armed whenever read you know, foul deed and whatever falsification he's ever done, and then you dwell on it. You know, you don't want to have a snitch on the stand for fifteen minutes or a half hour, or you want him there

for two goddamn days. It might be the second day that he starts to break or manifact. I had one snitch start taking the fifth right in front of the jury. That was practically the end of the case. I had another snitch, you know, who was molesting some child and I bought it had nothing to do with the case. But the guy, the person was not incredible human being.

You know, he was a piece of feces. I'm trying to go the jury that, so I have an investigator walk in with the child, you know, and say that's the one you were sleeping. What they're during this time, weren't blah blah blah blah. And you know he started, he was ashing and he started shaking on the stand. I knew then the jury wasn't going to convict. They

hated him too much. So you have to make the jury ultimately feel the same page, the same passion, the same pain, the agony you know that you feel when there is a perjurious informant and you just know and I call it, you're lying. You lie right now to the jury. Aren't you look at the jury? You know what's your like that? Are just yell at him or I'll go up close to them, and I don't know, it's you challenge him at a nonverbal level. It's like maybe they feel that you're carrying in your hands some

kind of carbon. You're just gonna whack them, and they start ultimately intimidated by the cross examination, and then some truths you know, splits out on occasion. The understand this that the nonverbal communication in court is far more significant

than the verbal. It's how loud you are, and the modulation of your voice and the gesture that goes with it, and what your eyes look like at the time you're cross examining, and your posture and your position in the court, and how close you are to the jury, and when he answers, you look right at the jury if it's an answer that you want to emphasize, And it's the distance between two sentences that might be significant, and it's the modulation of voice, the informations that you bring to

your language. All those things are far more important than the verbiage itself. The concept of persuasion requires concept of repetition. You want to say the same things over and over and pretty soon at the end of the case, those things are so solid and there might be only your questions, you know, and the standard instruction is who the questions of counsel are not evidence. But if that's only here and I ultimately it rings the bell that can't be

unwrung in their mind. So one of my substantialities going after the goddamn snitch. You know, ultimately I have no respect and they have no place in any honor system of justice.

Tell us a little bit about whatever movie interest or adaptations have made have been made from Tony and his appearances in court, Paulette, you're asking.

In fact, I just sent a package to Russell Crowe. I can see Russell Crowe in the role of Sarah, but he didn't respond. I can also see a television series such as House. I think that would be quite fast, fascinating and fabulous.

I found interesting, Tony. We've got to wrap up in a couple of minutes, but I want to ask you this is there because I've watched television, you know, again, fictional adaptations of lawyers acting in court cases, and you see a lot of drama and unfettered speeches, uninterrupted by the court. How on earth do you get to act

the way you act in front of the judge? Is it is it that no lawyers are actually employing the techniques that you're doing, or do you have sort of a masterful time at the at before the hearing, at the preliminary of what deer getting some of this? Obviously, these these judges know you by now. How do you ever get shut down by judges? How can you act the way you acting for it? I've never seen anything like that.

It's the judges. They're stopping me because you know, one is they may think the person's guilty, and they want to manipulate what occurs, and they might think that I may well get an a quitto and in near mind the guy's guilty. This would be a terrible miscarriage to justice. And I call those the moralists, and they put their personal moral perspective on the case beyond law, and they will silence the attorney if they think the attorney is going to win in a case that they think should

be lost. That's the worst kind of judge. Then there's the second kind, and that judge has been a prosecutor. Understand, in the criminal field, more than half the judges I encounter our ex prosecutors and they, you know, like, for instance, Class two nights ago, I'm in a restaurant. Some retired cop comes up to me and says, I hate you. I hated you all your life. I've watched too many police officers' funeral and I'm just looking up mellow man.

I'm saying, he is a very strong word. And how many times have you gone to the funeral of someone that a police officer has killed? Sir? So, I got judges who ex prosecuted. They fucking hate me, and they're gonna do everything they can to obstruct me. Sometimes I'm there at the podium, especially in federal court, I take my hand off the podium, make a gester, mississari, your hands off the podium. I'm gester in your honor. You

can't do that in this court. You put your hand back on the podium, and then you know, I sometimes I'll turn the podium so I can face the witness or face the you've turned the podium.

is the deprivation to do process. I want to this cry right now, and I'm yelling and screaming, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But yes, you hit the nail on the head. It's one of my pet new ingrediances that the judges sometimes will come down on me. Now sometimes it's just the opposite. I remember one case. It was filmed on sixty minutes, so it's still around somewhere, and they used a lot of the case the in the piece and the judge as to me, although she

knew was being filmed. She calls me up and I think the DA too to sidebar mister Sarah, I don't care what you do in this court but don't bore me, which was like an invitation, you know, to stand on my head if I desired. But a lot of judge don't say it, but that's what they want. They consider it in their world somewhere between entertainment and grand emotion, and because maybe yes it is rare, they're enticed by it. And many times I get more forensic latitude the lawyers,

hey man, not wind, no question. And I tried to ask, and you know, I got cut off. There was the objection was sustained where somehow I they'll let me do it. So it may be a product of age and you know, reputation, or they just want to hear. I don't know what my version in my fashion. So I have them on both sides, and very few are really neutral, although there is a segment that at leass posture posture neutrality, but they're biased one way or the other. But they're just

not manifesting it. But yes, it's a problem.

although my family and everybody's there, so it's nice. But I'm about to try to put together something on the East coast and in other places regarding this book. And I'm also writing a book about Marcel Marceau. We were friends and lovers and that was well, that's the next book, Fower.

talking about this great book. You guys are both very very engaging guests, and I want to thank you for taking the time to come out and speak to me and of course my audience.