Posted on 11/19/2015 3:39:42 PM PST by Elderberry
Thirty defense attorneys representing most of the 106 people charged in connection with the deadly Waco Twin Peaks shootout are asking for charges to be dropped.
The May 17 shootout between rival biker clubs left nine people dead and 18 more hospitalized with stab or gunshot wounds. Police arrested 177 bikers after the shooting, and all of them had bond set at $1 million.
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Last week, a grand jury indicted 106 of the 177 bikers on charges of organized criminal activity with the intent to commit or conspire to commit murder, capital murder or aggravated assault. It's a first-degree felony charge.
The grand jury is still deciding whether to indict the others.
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The defense attorneys who met Thursday said their clients did not plan, encourage or participate in any violence, and they are not gang members.
The attorneys said their clients came to Twin Peaks to attend a well-publicized meeting for all motorcycle clubs across the state, where riders could socialize, eat and talk about upcoming legislation.
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The attorneys said once detectives learned their biker clients were hiding for cover during the violent shootout, they should never have been arrested.
"I have no problem if police want to detain and question, that's their job. But they didn't detain and question. They just arrested en masse and set a bond at $1 million. There's a huge difference between detain and investigate, and arrest," said Dallas-based criminal defense attorney Susan Anderson, who is representing a group of accused bikers.
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Just within the last two days, at least six of the indicted bikers have filed lawsuits against the police and district attorney in federal court, alleging their civil rights were violated by being falsely arrested with template-based "fill-in-the-name" indictments.
Attorney Clinton Broden said the "template affidavits" contained allegations that were demonstrably false for most of the bikers who were part of the group rounded up and arrested.
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Several people spent more than three weeks in jail, and at least one person spent 40 days locked up.
"I speculate there will be more," said attorney Susan Criss, representing several of the indicted bikers. "Each defendant has to decide what case they have and what their damages are. It's an individual decision that has yet to be made by many people. But I'd be shocked if there wasn't more civil cases coming soon."
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No one has been charged with murdering anyone. The 106 indictments are about criminal conspiracy.
"In order to be guilty of the offense of engaging in organized crime, you have to be more than merely present. It doesn't matter what you're wearing. It doesn't matter who you're associating with," Anderson said. "The issue is whether or not these people met for the purpose of criminal activity."
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Anderson said rather than investigate who was armed during the shootout, police sold a story to the media about rival gang members agreeing to meet at the restaurant to settle a turf-war with violence. She said that mentality led to unwarranted arrests, with "identical fill-in-the-name" arrest affidavits.
"We have extreme serious concerns about the process at every single step of the way," said attorney Susan Criss. "You don't just indict everybody and say, 'Let's go to trial and we'll sort it out.'"
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A gag order is keeping a lid on new information, but in the days after the May 17 shooting, Waco police recovered about 450 weapons and 150 guns from the crime scene. Police at the time said the amount of weapons, and they fact that violence broke out so quickly, indicated the meeting was never intended to be a peaceful gathering.
"They didn't arrest everybody. There were many civilians in there. They didn't arrest them. They didn't arrest the wait staff. So they picked and chose who they wanted to arrest. They made the decision on site to arrest all the bikers, without any further investigation," Anderson said.
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The lawyers said they are waiting to receive discovery documents that will exculpate their clients, particularly the ballistic reports.
"Those reports critical. We have nine people that are dead. We need to know what bullets killed which people. We need to know which guns fired those bullets that killed those people. Were they bullets from persons in the clubs? Were they bullets from police? We don't know," Anderson said.
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And many defense attorneys believe those reports - which investigators still haven't completed - will result in most of charges being dropped.
Dear Waco Residents,
I hope that when this is all over, a bunch of you are taxed out of your homes to pay these men’s judgements against your city, and that a number of your LEO’s, the DA’s and the judges are up on charges. This whole thing stinks to high hell! If I were a decent Texas resident, I’d be pi$$ed off to have my state’s good name besmerched by this renegade city.
You think we'll ever know , or ever see any of the video from what did happen that day
On the facts, there was discussion about the ballistics reports, and how little ballistics resources are available in Texas. Hello - weren't the ballistics tests farmed out to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia?
Police have said the ballistics investigation is being headed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which has possession of more than 475 weapons from the scene, including at least 151 firearms.Autopsies released in Twin Peaks biker deaths - WacoTrib.com - August 13, 2015
The shorter of the two lady talkers (both named Susan) said that 177 were arraigned. I think that is false, although the lawyers probably are sloppy in use of legal terms.
Art. 26.01. ARRAIGNMENT. In all felony cases, after indictment, and all misdemeanor cases punishable by imprisonment, there shall be an arraignment.
Whatever Peterson did in setting bail was not arraignment, it was something else. And she is the one who was a judge. Aye-yi-yi.
I learned that Reyna is playing games with discovery, conditioning release of evidence on defense lawyers signing gag agreements. He'll probably litigate that, too.
As time passes, “accidental” deletions are increasingly likely.
You know, that may be the whole point of screwing up the arrests and indictments. If nobody is charged, or if the charges are dropped before discovery, the evidence can be bottled up forever - there is no court for it to come out in. No discovery without an indictment. Investigation can go on forever, and the evidence withheld on the pretext that the investigation is ongoing. There is NO statute of limitation on murder.
One way to get a mess of indictments thrown out is to screw them up. Then act angry, then say the guilty are getting away with murder, then prosecute nobody, and the evidence never comes out. Meanwhile, 177 people (most of them innocent) are punished by process, the DA sullies himself (but that's the price for covering up government-perpetrated murder), and the incident quickly fades from the public memory, which is about as good as the memory of a goldfish.
I believe that at his point, the prosecutor is trying to dig himself out of a hole. He will do so with plea bargains, intimidation, and attempt to turn indictees against some small set of other motorcycle club members who have some hope of being convicted. That would be those who can be connected with one or more of the deaths. They will have to be careful with this since the circumstances point also in the direction of law enforcement officers who expected a confrontation and responded, certainly with deadly force. Since they want to avoid any consideration of that likelihood, they are going to have to weave a tapestry of deceit. Many defense counsels will take an easy out and tell their clients that they are getting the best deal available and bail out. Only a few will take on the prosecutor, but only a few are needed.
My concern is that no one is going to be interested in finding the real murderers as probably they were both law enforcement officers and motorcycle club members, but these murderers are only a few , not just an overreach of justice that is ongoing.
The cops could have taken out all of the biker murderers.
Someone was killed in the parking lot by someone involved in the original altercation. So, who killed the remainder and how? Since the motorcycle bubbas were now trying to escape from the ambush kill zone they are unlikely to be the murderers after the original altercation. That is the key piece of information that the prosecutor does not want to see the light of day.
Not having a biker to charge with murder is a problem.
That would explain quite a bit of this business. However, someone who showed up at Twin Peaks killed someone, and not everyone who did this is a law enforcement officer. Identifying a motorcycle dude may be a big problem for the prosecutor.
This will be hidden better than 0bama’s actual birth certificate.
Before the Shoot-out at the Twin Peaks Corral, the LEO agenda may have been different. Knowing that could be interesting.
What makes a person gravitate towards living a life of thuggery? I don’t get it. You only have one life to live, why waste it? I don’t care what happens to any of them. Get them off the streets.
Not with all the video evidence it isn't.
Ever been to Waco? Ever even been to Texas?
I’ll wager that 99% of anyone not some criminal biker gang groupie will happily say that the worst of Texas beats the crap out of the best of kalifornicate.
For some reason, a memory from 8th grade Health class. We were to go to the gym and look at the Science Fair. Coach said, "Boys, there's some golf balls on one of the projects. Don't anybody steal a golf ball."
You KNOW what happened.
The last I saw was a comment that BATF in California and Houston were to do the ballistics testing.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/guns-seized-after-waco-shootout-being-tested/33180718
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One of the reasons I keep bumping these type of threads.
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