That is something I had not considered. Is this normal in a situation where not a single indictment has been returned?
(I realize the irony of using "normal" and Waco in the same sentence.)
Broden seems to write good briefs. "Unclean hands" indeed.
Posted on 09/21/2015 1:34:27 PM PDT by don-o
WACO (September 21, 2015) A Dallas lawyer who represents a Hewitt man caught up in the Twin Peaks shootings has reiterated his plea before the state’s highway criminal appeals court seeking the gag order in the case be overturned.
In addition to that, his client who lost his appeal in a Friday examining trial has spoken out about his participation in the Twin Peaks shootings that took nine lives and left 20 injured.
F. Clinton Broden filed a new brief with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals based upon a KWTX News story last week that included a comment from McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna saying his client, Matt Clendennen, had his constitutional rights violated by being dis-allowed to speak on the issue.
Broden said Reyna spoke about the shootings last week, yet Clendennen is being prevented from speaking on the same issue.
Reyna issued a statement last week to News 10 after the Associated Press reported a detailed report on the shooting by Waco police had been leaked to them.
Reyna said: “someone violated their ethical and legal obligations” by making the information available to AP.
Broden, in his amended brief, said his client agrees “that if it was a defense attorney who released discovery materials to the AP, that attorney may very well have violated his/her ethical and legal obligations.”
On the other hand, Broden says, Reyna has “contributed to the ridiculousness that is occurring all around the case.”
The deadline for submitted briefs to the state court passed last week and both Broden and Reyna filed the requested briefs, but a check Monday morning revealed the appeals court has not yet released its ruling.
In a related issue, retired District Judge James E. Morgan on Friday during an examining trial on the arrests in the wake of the shooting melee held that another of Broden’s clients, George Bergman, was properly arrested along with 176 other bikers and police had ample probable cause to make those arrests.
In a statement Broden released Monday morning, Bergman described himself as a 48-year-old long-haul truck driver who has five children, one of whom is a state trooper.
“I am not a gang member and I am not a criminal,” Bergman said in a printed statement.
Bergman said he wasn’t planning to go to Waco on the day of the shooting but because his wife was out of town and it was a “beautiful day”, he decided a ride to Waco would be appropriate.
Bergman said as he drove into the parking lot at Twin Peaks, he walked toward Don Carlos to use the restroom, and as he did so, he heard gunshots and took cover.
Bergman said he watched as police fired “wildly into the crowd,” said he called his wife to tell her he “may never see her again” and that he was “in the middle of a police shootout,” and watched as police “dump(ed) a body of one of the bikers in front of me and me hanging to try to plug the hole where he was shot to stop him from bleeding out and dying.”
In closing, Bergman said “I was not part of a conspiracy to commit murder.
“I was part of a conspiracy to drink beers and eat hamburgers with my friends.”
Bergman was released after being held for 20 days on the original charge of engaging in organized criminal activity after his initial bond of $1 million was reduced to $80,000.
In his statement he says as a result of being held in jail for so long, he lost his job and still suffers physical injury from being handcuffed for an extended period of time.
I just copy / paste
a conspiracy of kwtx tv to smoke pot? i mean this report is botched almost to the point of farce.
IBTG
Emergent Motion to Vacate Gag Order Based on Abelino Reyna's Unclean Hands
It's not an amended brief, it is a separate one. The previous arguments stand on their own merits, and this one stands on its own merits (or lack thereof) too. There is a lack of evidence that the leaker is from the DA or LEO sphere, and I believe all defense lawyers possess the evidence too.
That is something I had not considered. Is this normal in a situation where not a single indictment has been returned?
(I realize the irony of using "normal" and Waco in the same sentence.)
Broden seems to write good briefs. "Unclean hands" indeed.
The trigger for allowing a defense is the arrest. But I would say it is not normal, certainly not automatic for LE to produce evidence prior to a charge being filed. Defense lawyers have been issuing subpoenas for state's evidence to facilitate filing habeas corpus and to prepare for examining trials.
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