Posted on 11/12/2015 5:57:51 AM PST by Elderberry
The day after dozens of bikers were indicted after a deadly brawl in Waco, many of them are likely to be considering making a deal, experts said, potentially giving up their biker brothers when faced with a long prison sentence.
Prosecutors in McLellan County indicted 106 bikers on Tuesday on charges of engaging in organized criminal activity, some six months after a melee at a Twin Peaks that left nine dead and at least 18 wounded. If convicted, they face the prospect of 15 years to life.
Many of the bikers indicted likely didn't throw a punch or fire a shot during the incident. But once one domino falls _ and someone agrees to cooperate by sharing inside information _ the landscape could shift dramatically for some, said Geoffrey Corn, a professor at South Texas College of Law, in Houston.
Prosecutors have still not revealed what specifically they believe each of the person charged did that May 17 afternoon, as well as who among them are directly responsible for the deaths and injuries.
Authorities have also declined to reveal who among them was shot by Waco Police, although authorities have said officers fired their weapons to save their own lives or those of others.
So far, 106 of the 177 people arrested that Sunday afternoon have been indicted. McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna said the grand jury continues looking at the case, which involved a clash between the Bandidos Motorcycle Club and the Cossacks Motorcycle Club.
"This is just the beginning of an ongoing, continuing investigation," he said Wednesday. "Eventually all 177 cases will be put before the (grand jury.)"
Securing an indictment sends a message that they are pushing ahead with the case and grand jurors agree there is probable cause the law was broken.
"One of the advantages of an indictment is you have ratcheted up the pressure on the targets," said Corn, the law professor. "All you need is one or two of them to come in and cooperate and agree to testify about how this was a plan to protect turf."
And discussions are most certainly happening behind the scenes, he said.
"If you are a defense lawyer, you are talking to your client saying, 'now this is getting real, we need to think about some of the options here,'" he said. "If I'm the (district attorney) it is a race to the door and I'm going to reward whoever shows up first."
Still, there are no guarantees anyone will take a deal, he said.
The Bandidos are seen as an especially insular group, where loyalty is everything and getting a member to turn his back on the club would be tough, according to those who have studied outlaw bikers.
"You might have guys who circle the wagons and say, our strength is in numbers," Corn said.
Larry Karson, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Houston Downtown said prosecutors benefit from defendants feeling the pressure.
The indictment and hefty potential penalty amount to leverage for prosecutors, he said.
"The heavier the potential sentence, the greater the leverage," he said, nothing that even innocent people have pleaded guilty in cases in order to avoid doing major time.
"If you have somebody who rolls, you have inside information," said Karson, who is a retired Customs Service agent.Karson stressed that just because the people were indicted, does not mean there is enough evidence to convict them at trial.
"In Texas the grand jury is a marionette of the district attorney, basically having their strings pulled to do his bidding," he said. "The district attorney chooses what evidence is and isn't presented to the grand jury with no challenge from those being prosecuted."
Houston lawyer Paul Looney, who is representing a former member of the Cossacks, agreed that for some of the people charged, the pressure is on.
"The reality is that clients who don't have a lot of confidence in their lawyer panic early," he said. Several defendants have lawyers who they had not met before and did not hire, but were court appointed, he said.
"They have no relationship," Looney said. "And it stands to reason those people are going to be under a lot of pressure."
Brazil~~~Hurry up and confess, just think of your credit rating!
even innocent people have pleaded guilty in cases in order to avoid doing major time.
I hate our system that this is even allowed to be considered.
I hope they all cooperate and every gang sticks together and proves the cops did all the shooting in the beginning and they didn’t know it was the cops so they started shooting back. And that’s probably what actually happened.
Look up the story of Vic Feazell. (sp) A Grand Jury was seated for 11 months and could not get an indictment. Another one was seated and an indictment was returned in 4 days. Later after Feazell’s acquittal members of the second Grand Jury came forward and said they were threatened by IRS agents that their lives would be made miserable if they didn’t vote for an indictment.
Wasn’t able to read the story without signing up at Houston chronicle, but the excerpt posted here seems to indicate (from this quote “This is just the beginning of an ongoing, continuing investigation,” he (Reyna) said Wednesday. “Eventually all 177 cases will be put before the (grand jury.)”
Seems to me (just my opinion) the DA is throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks and to get someone to roll over. Coercive tactics under color of law/justice. Whatever happened to completing an investigation and then prosecuting the alleged perps?
This is troubling, to put it mildly.
I did look him up - an attorney (I found nothing but ads & a brief wiki) - who was the client/what was the case?
Truly interested here. Abuse of power/government is repugnant and should catch the attention of all liberty-loving Americans.
Add in gag orders and blanket indictments, and you have the makings of yet another conspiracy by TPTB.
At what point do We The People figure out that RICO Statutes exclude The State, though they seem to expressly apply in many cases?
Hard to tell what's going on in that pic.
Somebody likely knows who these individuals are and their relationships to Waco LEO.
The city's biggest issue may well be convincing the indited that there is any honor in the prosecutor's office.
With this many people involved, it is probably going to be impossible for everyone to stand up against an agency with apparently unlimited power and money. Impeaching 'witnesses' will be pretty straightforward though, I suspect.
LOL. And we know that the government never lies.
Looks like he could be a uniformed cop to me.
They lie but usually not so blatantly. There's no way they can go through the prosecution of all those bikers and not have the truth come out.
Also, think of the number of Waco police officers who would have to be in on the conspiracy. Are the rank and file Waco cops that corrupt?
You watch too much TV.
Yes,
Those that aren't actively corrupt keep their mouths shut so as to keep their jobs. Same thing. The mafia ain't got nothing on the silence of the "thin blue line".
You'll notice as well, that all of the rumors flying around right after the incident that biker gangs would be taking revenge against cops didn't quite come to pass did it?
This link has everything you’d want to know. Click on the link US vs Feazell.
I personally knew Deanna, the First Assistant DA, at the time and I KNEW he wasn’t guilty of taking bribes for dropping DWI cases. How did I know? Because it was my friend who dropped them. And she said they were dropped because of either poor police work or not enough evidence.
Vic ran as the “anti establishment” candidate and won the democratic primary. Then his opponent endorsed the republican. When he took over the defense lawyers had been running the place. He built a waiting room and made them sign in. They got pissed and made bumper stickers that said “I visited Ft. Feazell”.
When he took office files were lost, some found behind cabinets and some found in the ceiling. They weren’t going to make it easy on him. All the drains had been plugged up. One of the secretaries that he kept on was sabotaging cases and he fired her. He had kept some attorneys and had to fire some of them because they were working against him.
There came a time when they stopped taking cases from the Waco Police Department because of shoddy police work and frame ups. That pissed them off.
He made the Texas Rangers out to be frauds when he proved that Henry Lee Lucas could not possibly have committed all the murders the Rangers had solved because he had confessed to them. The Rangers were pissed off.
Every law enforcement organization in the country came down on him including the DEA and IRS. He had been given a plaque from an anti drug concern that had a syringe glued onto it. The DEA came in and tore the syringe off and entered it as evidence of Vic possessing drug paraphanalia. sp
So the IRS found four crooked lawyers who had tax problems and forced them to lie and say Vic had given them bribes to drop DWI cases. What actually happened is if a case was dropped due to lack of evidence or some other legal reason the lawyers would tell their clients “For and extra $500 I can get this case dropped.” When in fact, the case had already been dropped.
The only law enforcement agency that wouldn’t have anything to do with it was the McClennan County Sheriff’s Department. The sheriff at that time was a good guy. Anyone could call and ask to speak to him and he’d talk to them. I know because I called with a problem about a collection agency harassing me and he told me “If they bother you again tell them to call me.” He also refused to have anything to do with the raid on the David Koresh compound. He told the DEA “If you’ll call him up he’ll come in and then he can give you a tour of the compound.” But the DEA wanted it all on TV.
It’s sad to see that Waco hasn’t changed even after Vic won $58 million in a libel suit against Channel 8 in Dallas. But I guarantee if he was the DA today this biker thing would be handled a lot differently. When he was acquitted he said “As long as I put guys behind bars who didn’t wear badges everyone loved me.”
By the way, if I remember correctly Sixty Minutes couldn’t find anything on Vic. The report is on his web page.
He sounds like a rare species..an honorable attorney, and one willing to stand up to “the system” to boot.
Good on him. Can’t wait to read up on him, as it’s hard to believe.
of course, I will give his story a fair shake...it’s just in my blood & through personal experiences that it’s natural to question the morals, motivations & actions of such a rare bird. Never dealt with someone like that firsthand, but it’s a hopeful sign that not all is lost.
Thank you for sending!
The guy was as decent a man as there ever was. After he got his millions he moved to Austin and for years represented people who couldn’t afford a decent lawyer.
There was a school janitor that had been wrongfully convicted of murder and spent 20 years in prison. Once DNA proved him innocent he was released. The state immediately went after him for back child support. Vic represented him for free and I think he got the state to pay the child support.
He was a very strong Christian man and he was as clean as a whistle. In the trial it came out that one of the crooked lawyers the IRS was forcing to testify against Vic had a C.B. Radio “handle” of “Sheister”. The lawyers, by the way, came out and told the truth and how they had been threatened by the IRS if they didn’t lie about Vic taking bribes.
The Sunday morning paper that announced his acquittal began about a small time lawyer who said he was called to the federal building in Waco and he said he found himself sitting across the table for the largest group of law enforcement agencies he had ever seen. The only one not represented was the county sheriff’s office. He said they tried to coerce him into testifying against Vic. He said he told them they could send him to prison because he would not lie about it. He said he knew right then they didn’t have anything on Vic if they “were coming after a small time lawyer like me.”
You should read CARELESS WHISPERS if you want to see his skill as a lawyer. He got a conviction of murder for hire when the killer killed the wrong girl. It’s hard enough to convict a murder for hire as it is. But to get a conviction when the wrong person was killed is extraordinary.
The story also shows what a dedicated cop can do. The Waco Police stopped investigating the case and put it in their cold case file. And they did it rather quickly. The cop that had found the bodies quit and went to work for the sheriff’s office under the condition that he could work on the murders on his own time. He solved the case with the help of a psychic. Fascinating story.
It took years but I remember the day the killer was executed.
I think another thing that pissed off the establishment was several of Vic’s assistants ran for judgeships. They thought he was trying to build his on machine.
During his trial in Austin he passed me on the freeway. I gave him a thumbs up and he smiled and returned the gesture. He didn’t know me but he knew who I was because he knew I was a friend of his first assistant. He was driving an old Caddy that had seen it’s better days. Believe me, he was NOT on the take.
Like I said, it’s sad to see that Waco is still corrupt. I haven’t lived there since 1991. I will be town this weekend for the Baylor-Oklahoma game.
Sorry for the long post but it’s a story that’s always fascinated me. A movie deal was in the works but, as I was told, the story was too long to do it justice in two hours.
So the Bandidos are going to start killing Mom and Pop club members that only got arrested for wearing “Support the Fat Mexican” patches. That isn’t very nice considering those little clubs have been paying “dues” to the Fat Mexican.
Roflmao.
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