Charles Bonner

Prominent Trial Attorney, Jack Girardi interviews Attorney and Author, Charles Bonner. Growing up on a cotton farm outside Selma, Ala, Charles Bonner lived the extreme injustice of segregation. In his teens, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), sitting in and peacefully marching for equal rights. Now he’s a trial lawyer and author fighting against discrimination and violence.

Forever changed by the civil rights movement, Bonner committed himself to working for equal rights locally and globally, including working for the rights of farmworkers. In 1972 he earned a degree in Anthropology at Sonoma State University, finishing his last 12 units studying in a Tanzanian village where he learned to speak Swahili. Bonner returned to the U.S to further his education, first studying philosophy at Stanford and then obtaining his law degree from the New College School of Law in San Francisco. “I don’t think I would have been a lawyer today if it hadn’t been for the Civil Rights Movement, in fact I’m sure I wouldn’t have been,” says Bonner.

Bonner has been practicing law for 27 years and has been the lead attorney in over sixty-five jury trials involving civil rights cases, police misconduct cases, and personal injury cases. He started his practice first in Oakland in 1979, and then moved to Sausalito in 1989. In 2006, his son, recently graduated from Stanford law, joined him in his practice.

In 2010, Bonner added author to his list of accomplishments. His first novel, The Bracelet, is a crime thriller loosely based on the harrowing story of one of his clients who escaped the basement of a sexual predator in upstate New York. The story follows “Macie” as she brings her captor to justice and sets out to rescues the victims of sexual trafficking around the world. Bonner dedicated his book to victims of civil and human rights violations and directs a portion of the proceeds to The Bracelet Charitable Freedom Fund, which seeks to empower victims of all forms of slavery.