Posted on 08/21/2015 4:42:00 PM PDT by mac_truck
In an opinion released Thursday, Justice Rex Davis of the 10th Court of Appeals declared that officials had sufficient probable cause to arrest two bikers after the May 17 Twin Peaks shootout in Waco.
The melee killed nine men and injured another 20, resulting in the arrest of 177 bikers, each initially held on controversial $1 million bonds on a charge of engaging in organized criminal activity.
Final autopsy reports were released last week on the nine killed in the melee, but ballistics evidence remains publicly unavailable, pending the completion of an investigation headed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Both bikers involved in the ruling, Marcus Pilkington, 36, of Mexia, and Reginald Weathers, 43, of Forney, are represented by Austin attorney Adam Reposa.
Pilkington and Weathers filed applications asserting that they “were being illegally confined” and that officials lacked probable cause that the two were guilty of engaging in organized criminal activity that day.
Thursday’s ruling cites a section of the Texas Penal Code which states that a person commits the offense if, “with intent to establish, maintain, or participate in a combination or in the profits of combination or as a member of a criminal street gang, the person commits or conspires to commit one or more of the following: murder, capital murder ... (or) aggravated assault.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wacotrib.com ...
BUt that's the pattern of accusation you've long been running. So I suppose it's fitting that you add to all the rest, that last additional mistake, interestingly enough based on mere assumption, which has also been part of the pattern.
There's a kind of geometry to it. Like fractal blossom (of continuing error).
Mere accusation and innuendo doesn't cut the mustard, stew-gator.
I notice that Gator is adding an issue -- whether you made an express or implied error that the context was an examining trial. More smoke, more evidence of bad faith.
And also FWIW, an examining trial is not the only procedural vehicle where sufficiency of the accusation can be tested. We have an example in this case, a habeas action predicated on a claim that the affidavit is insufficient.
Examining trial can go beyond the four corners of the affidavit, and can still (in principle, but never in practice) produce a finding that ALL the allegations, including those not contained in the affidavit, are insufficient (if proven true) to make a crime.
I can admit to some amount of implied error, on my own part.
But thank you for pointing to the smokescreen nature of the forum tactic used by those who never admit to error on their own part.
I've been getting the impression that even if an 8 X 10 glossy photograph with circles and errors were to be shown, demonstrating that the blanket accusations were too far reaching & too broadly applied, there would be still be refusal on the part of a few here to look upon anything which may challenge a veritable raft of collected assumptions, which assumptions are central-most to the primary charges, as filed by McLennan County DA.
I would say, "know what I mean, Vern?" but you know it all better than I do. I do thank you for all your own efforts to bring clarity to the primary subject matter of this thread, and apologize for my own participation having caused you to take additional time out of your life, to write towards maintaining that clarity of focus.
Dogs bark, but the Waco Biker Shootout Case moves on...
No apology necessary, happy to do it. I find a few of the contributors on FR to be odious, but funny thing is, the offensive personalities can shift around depending on the subject.
As for whether or not you implied the subject case was an examining trial, heck, I expressly claimed it was, until I found the decision. To the error, "so what?" The question is presence or absence of probable cause in the affidavit.
If there is probable cause, in fact, then all will be indicted. The threshold for indictment is probable cause, if probable cause exists, an indictment is justified.
Then there is the right to relief in federal courts.
Exactly! Also the little Gonzales boy. Also pro-life demonstrators. Janet Reno proved that when they are in power, they will stop at nothing they can get away with. They tolerate no dissent. The scary thing is that other ordinary Americans with a badge and a firearm are willing to follow such abusive and illegal orders! Against their fellow citizens!
So we can’t allow them to get away with it now. Heaven help us in the future when they feel empowered to up the ante of abuse of citizens.
And less than two years later, inexplicably accepts the arrest of 177 people and ensuing extreme financial hardship on pretense that they are hardened dues-paying gang members, and it turns out only one in three even has a prior arrest, let alone conviction.
Justice for All seems best served if the Gangs are disbanded and put out of business.... I do not believe that the rights of citizens should be stepped on in order to bring that about.
Then you want your cake and eat it too, as the saying goes. You want to go swimming without getting wet.
You believe the kinds of biker folks who show up at COCI meetings are likely guilty of some very bad things, apparently, or at least think it probable enough for them to be financially ruined and reputations destroyed, at least for quite awhile if not forever, we'll wait (and the arrestees will pay) for three or four years 'til the courts "sort this mess out."
So it's way past too late for them -- they're already harmed. But you're pretty certain that where there's smoke, there's fire, they should have known better, naughty children.
How about all innocent bikers in the State of Texas, not only those arrested, voluntarily disassociate?
As if you wouldn't read self-interest into such volunteered sentiment? And wouldn't you feel smugly vindicated to hear them come to their senses so nice and neat just the way you think they should, submit to your demands to essentially behave as if they had been bad little kiddies?
And by "gangs", do you mean clubs? Please discriminate. By insignia, then, you seek to "disband and put out of business" ... what, exactly, wherein two thirds of this criminal enterprise have, according to records, been wholly law-abiding their entire adult lives?
Gangs cannot cause as much harm without their willing support groups.
*sigh*
What on earth do you think law men are for? What is their purpose? Are they so inept that even when the "bad guys" are wearing patches, only a smattering have actual criminal convictions in their pasts?
AMDG&BVMH, all I can say is that you're out of touch.
“What on earth do you think law men are for? “
Mostly we have them of necessity because of those among us who are not self-regulating enough to respect others and not harm others.
That would be valid if you hadn’t spent your time equating bikers with criminals.
Did you think no one noticed?
“That would be valid if you hadn’t spent your time equating bikers with criminals.”
I have only equated biker gangs with criminals. I have never equated all bikers with criminals.
FYI, I have been a ‘biker’ since 1961.
“I notice that Gator is adding an issue — whether you made an express or implied error that the context was an examining trial. More smoke, more evidence of bad faith.”
My first response was a good faith request to provide a link since I had not seen his info before.
Then, instead of providing one, he came back with a snarky reply.
“You’ve got the wrong guy.
BUt that’s the pattern of accusation you’ve long been running. So I suppose it’s fitting that you add to all the rest, that last additional mistake, interestingly enough based on mere assumption, which has also been part of the pattern.”
I said it WASN’T you.
No, wrong. We have them because as long as man draws breath and strives to live in a civilized fashion, there will be bad people who victimize innocents. A law man finds those who break the law.
A policeman is supposed to be a protector of the civilians to whom he is a servant. His job is to catch bad guys who victimize innocents by way of robbery, assault, kidnapping, extortion, etc. THAT is why we have policemen. A law man's job is to enforce laws against victimizing innocent people.
A soldier's job is to go against an enemy. That enemy is usually identified by insignia and certainly in the soldier's world, everything has to do with rank and insignia and patches.
There were zero law men at Waco. There were policemen pretending to be soldiers. Either that, or the "gang experts" identifying the dangerous criminal elements at Waco are wildly inept if the vast majority of criminals on whom they are so expertly informed, have never even been arrested before, let alone convicted of a crime? Aren't law men supposed to catch at least a lot of regular/pro assaulters, robbers, murderers, kidnappers, human traffickers and extortionists just for doing those things?
You want to give law men the "right" to assume those things by way of insignia?
Stop confusing military structure with lawmen doing their work among free adults who have the right to fraternize with fat, sloppy, tattooed, beer-drinking tobacco-smoking bikers.
“There were zero law men at Waco. There were policemen pretending to be soldiers. “
You would have preferred that they NOT stopped the gang war?
“free adults who have the right to fraternize with fat, sloppy, tattooed, beer-drinking tobacco-smoking bikers.”
You have the right to associate with all the fat, sloppy, tattooed, bear drinking tobacco-smoking bikers as you wish. No one is stopping you, least all me. I trust your previous statements that you abhor criminal gangs such as the Bandidos and as you said, who wouldn’t? Except maybe the people who are innocent, but still crave whatever benefit comes from wearing the support patch.
Yes, and we have all noticed your habit of broadbrushing who or what constitutes a criminal biker gang. It’s apparent that you do this by appearance and/or if they attended a meeting open to the public that you decided apriori is run for and by criminals.
Actually, you did not. All you said was "nope".
Which left it open to interpretation, including possibility that I was that entity, whoever that was (you dragged that reference out of left field, from who knows where) leaving it all open-ended enough to include that it be as if I was not delivering as I'd advertised.
Which makes your above italicized response to be a form of misrepresentation. You said simply and only "nope". You did not say that it wasn't me, as you just attempted to assert that you said. You may have meant or intended that, but you didn't actually say that.
In this instance, this could have all been avoided if not for your own sloppiness, and unwillingness to amend your own statements, and that attempted to be provided cover for later by follow-up misrepresentation and distortion of what occurred.
So again, as per established pattern, there isn't a single little thing you've touch upon, that in your hands have not in some way been distorted or else contaminated, turning it all into yet another layer among layers of open-ended innuendo, misrepresentations, pointless distractions (while vainly trying to avoid ever needing to admit to your own errors) joined with your own opinions mistaken for "facts", leaving your statements in the end result, to have been form of lies all along, often much due to the contexts to where and how you've typically sought those assertions and opinions to apply.
In other words, as seemingly again it must be pointed out to you again;
Hope you choke.
Precisely.
And in an enduring sense that question remains to beg, regardless of whether or not some judge or judges have accepted accusations at face value, weighing those along with their own unspoken assumptions placed upon the scale.
That's the problem with earthly & human judgements. Those have always tended towards being hit & miss, but the misses still counted as hits (and at times, the hits deliberately massaged into dismissal by way of complex technicality that converts hits into misses).
“or if they attended a meeting open to the public “
Are you referring to that Bandido run meeting where they decide how much to extort from the other clubs?
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