Posted on 11/15/2015 4:23:27 AM PST by don-o
A McLennan County grand jury has indicted 106 bikers who were arrested May 17 after a shootout outside a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco that killed nine people and wounded 20. Curiously, nine of the 106 people indicted last week were not among the 177 people arrested six months ago, according to The Associated Press. AP reported that none of nine has been arrested.
McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna has said the grand jury will return to consider charges against the other 80 bikers arrested six months ago, possibly as soon as Wednesday.
The indictments allege that the 106 bikers were engaged in organized criminal activity. This is a broad, catch-all charge â and one with a serious penalty for anyone convicted of the crime: 15 years to life in prison. I think itâs clear the indictments are designed to force most of the accused into accepting plea agreements â which not only will allow prosecutors to leverage testimony against any truly hardcore gang members they want to go after, but also will allow prosecutors to save face for creating a legal morass when they arrested 177 people.
(Excerpt) Read more at viewpoints.blog.statesman.com ...
“Curiously, nine of the 106 people indicted last week were not among the 177 people arrested six months ago,”
I found that little sentence interesting.
Yes, that is odd.
BUMP
There were definitely people at the fight that managed to get away. One biker was interviewed by police, after the fact, because police heard he had a bullet in his arm. He died several months later in a motorcycle accident and prosecutors got a warrant to extract the bullet from his body.
After reading the statutes they were indicted on, I wonder if the assault charge would stand if there wasn’t evidence of directly assaulting a victim? The murder statute does have a specification for deaths that result from criminal activity, but I don’t see that in the assault statute.
If there is no gang and/or no conspiracy, see Texas Penal Code Chapter 7, especially sections 7.01 through 7.03 for culpability being assigned to what is commonly referred to as "aider and abettor," or "accomplice." Those principle can attach to any crime, including the crime of assault.
I am not a lawyer, but if one was going to bring the assaults in as being part of a criminal gang I would think that statement would be part of the assault description. It is an interesting difference between the murder and assault statutes. I could easily see an assault law include being held accountable for the assaults committed by accomplices during another crime.
It's part of the Organized Crime statute, which points to the assault statute. Assault is a crime either way, but the "gang" statute says commission of certain specified underlying crimes as part of a gang, enhances the penalty associated with the underlying crime.
The "aid / abet / accomplice" statute is similar to the organized crime statute in that the underlying conduct must first be a crime, in order to apply the "aid / abet" widget.
The legal fiction worked by the "aid / abet" statute is that a person who aids or abets, actually committed the crime. There is no distinction between doing the crime, and helping somebody else do it.
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