Posted on 07/19/2016 5:01:31 PM PDT by Elderberry
Two Dallas-area lawyers who represent bikers in the pending Twin Peaks shootout trial are asking two judges to disqualify the district attorney and appoint a special prosecutor.
Nine bikers died and 20 more were injured in the May 17, 2015 shootout between rival biker gangs and law enforcement officers at Waco’s Twin Peaks restaurant.
Attorneys Clinton F. Broden and Mick Mickelsen both says District Attorney Abel Reyna should be disqualified from hearing the cases because he has a financial interest in the case, Broden said in a news release Monday.
Reyna wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Broden is representing Matthew Alan Clendennen and Mickelsen represents Burton George Burgman, both of whom are charged with engaging in organized criminal activity, as are all the Twin Peaks defendants.
In the motion for recusal, Broden claims Reyna has a personal financial interest in the prosecution of the cases because both men already have named Reyna in a lawsuit.
“Reyna has a clear personal financial incentive to pursue the misguided prosecutions…,” Broden said Monday.
“Reyna’s pursuit of the cases against Mr. Clendennen and Mr. Bergman despite the fact that video evidence reveals their innocence is a due process violation,” Broden said.
One of the motions is filed in Judge Matt Johnson’s 54th District Court, the other in Judge Ralph Strother’s 19th District Court.
“In pursuing my client’s prosecution, it is clear that Mr. Reyna is being influenced by his own personal, financial interests and that these interests compromise the performance of his public duty,” Broden said in the release.
The pleadings in the two motions are basically identical.
Broden presents as fact that “members of the district attorney’s office became fact witnesses in this case when they involved themselves in the investigative decisions made in the cases, even going so far as to overrule decisions made to release most of the motorcyclists” on the day of their original arrests.
The petitions claim that on the day of the arrests Waco police interviewed dozens of potential suspects and, at the end of the day, had decided to release many of them.
But later in that process, according to the petition, Reyna and others from the DA’s office forced police to suspend their interviews and charge all 177 defendants under a blanket arrest affidavit.
Broden’s complaint also states Reyna “showed his colors” during statements he made to the media about the shootings.
Clendennen and several other bikers arrested have filed federal civil rights lawsuits against Reyna, Waco police, McLennan County Sheriff’s deputies and members of the Texas Department of Public Safety but none of those cases have yet been to court.
Broden points out in the pleading that if Reyna tries and successfully convicts Clendennen and others in the criminal case, that would significantly lessen the likelihood that a civil remedy against Reyna would be forthcoming.
The pleadings ask both judges to set the matter for hearing, saying that without a hearing it would never be known which of the individuals involved made decisions about the issues or whether any of them might be considered material witnesses in the case.
IBTG
You weren't.
Reyna’s behavior has made Nifong of Duke LaCrosse infamy look like King Solomon. He is going to cost the taxpayers plenty.
“Reyna’s behavior has made Nifong of Duke LaCrosse infamy look like King Solomon.”
In Waco, we have videos of the shootings and even the gangster stating that it was a gang war.
” those narsty bikers “
“The Bandidos were baptized in blood. They were founded in 1966 by an ex-Marine and Vietnam vet named Don Chambers, whose road name was Mother and who led the club until 1972, when he and two other men were convicted of double murder. They abducted two drug dealers who’d cheated the Bandidos on a meth deal, forced the dealers to dig their own graves in the Texas desert, then shot them and set fire to their bodies.
Chambers’s three successors were all taken down by the feds for a variety of offenses. During the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, the Bandidos did everything the feds continue to accuse them of doing today, including trafficking in narcotics and prostitution.
But there hasn’t been a major Bandidos bust since 2011, when 39 club members and associates were arrested in Dallas, San Antonio, and Denver on gun and drug charges. “
http://www.gq.com/story/untold-story-texas-biker-gang-shoot-out
Following your logic, every citizen of Chicago should be indicted, the gang wars up there have been going on for 100 years. You are a special kind of stupid.
“Following your logic, every citizen of Chicago should be indicted, the gang wars up there have been going on for 100 years.”
No. Only those participating in gang shootings while wearing gang colors in a family plaza on Sunday mornings ...
“Following your logic, every citizen of Chicago should be indicted, the gang wars up there have been going on for 100 years. You are a special kind of stupid.”
Does not follow from my post. Most Chicagoans don’t wear gang colors and don’t show up for gang gunfights captured on video.
Sorry. It’s not a Federal Case.
“In the motion for recusal, Broden claims Reyna has a personal financial interest in the prosecution of the cases because both men already have named Reyna in a lawsuit.”
So basically, if this ploy works, then anyone can get any DA, judge, etc removed from their case just by concocting a reason to file a lawsuit against them?
Yeah! Ain't that a hoot?/s
That's just one example why I love Lawyers./s
Sounds like pitching one publicity-screaming move against another one.
“Bikers often fill a power vacuum and will be oddly chivalrous on many occasions. People who have lived near Hells Angels clubhouses have often described the bikers driving off petty crime. They are not a one dimensional phenomenon.”
Same was said about the Mafia ... and Saddam Hussien
“At any rate, I’ve seen you get sore more than once about the fact that one of these groups was hogging (no pun intended) the “rights to wear colors.””
You made that up. You have NEVER seen me ‘sore’.
“If colors means narsty bikers, why would anyone be complaining that narsty bikers are in charge of the colors? “
The Cossacks complained and got a bunch of them killed.
“Isn’t that kind of like complaining that rapists are controlling the calling cards of Jack the Ripper?”
Come again?
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