Posted on 11/07/2016 4:02:53 PM PST by Elderberry
San Antonio attorney Tom Clarke is concerned that James Rosas will become a “lightning rod” as the first Twin Peaks biker to stand trial, but Clarke said his client didn’t do anything wrong and someone needs to draw a line in the sand.
Almost 18 months after the shootout between rival biker groups left nine dead and two dozen injured, Rosas has become the first of 154 bikers indicted in the May 17, 2015, incident to receive a trial date.
Judge Matt Johnson of Waco’s 54th State District Court set Rosas’ trial on first-degree felony engaging in organized criminal activity charges to begin Jan. 23 after Clarke announced he was ready for trial and asked for a trial setting.
The request comes as the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office continues to provide hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pages of discovery materials to the bikers’ defense attorneys, including copies of police reports, hundreds of hours of audio and video recordings of the incident and subsequent interviews with bikers, 700,000 pages of cellphone records, tens of thousands of photographs and Facebook posts.
Rosas now is set for a pretrial docket appearance Jan. 6 and a status hearing Jan. 13. It is unclear if the DA’s office will announce whether it will be ready to take Rosas’ case to trial on Jan. 23 or if it will seek a postponement.
The remainder of the indicted bikers’ cases remain on what are known as announcement dockets in 54th and 19th State District Court and have not been moved yet to the courts’ trial dockets.
District Attorney Abel Reyna and his first assistant, Michael Jarrett, did not return phone calls from the Tribune-Herald seeking comment on the biker cases.
Clarke said Rosas, 48, a welder, is a hardworking married man who lives in Selma and likes to ride motorcycles with his buddies on weekends. Clarke said the only thing Rosas did wrong that day was to wear a vest as a member of the Valerosos motorcycle group, a support club of the Bandidos.
Clarke has tried calling the McLennan County DA’s office to ask what evidence it has against his client because he says he can’t find any as he pores over the reams of discovery evidence. He said no one returned his phone calls.
Circling the wagons
“I think they have gotten into a circle-the-wagons mentality over there in the DA’s office because of all the civil lawsuits being filed and the attempt to disqualify the DA from handling the cases,” Clarke said. “But to me, this case is strange because I can kind of understand them arresting everyone, but by now, they should have sorted them all out and said, ‘You can go. You didn’t do anything.’ I don’t see where that is justice here. If you have got something, show it to me.”
The case against Rosas, like many others, should be dismissed, Clarke said.
“There has been a lot of discovery released, and I slog through it and I don’t see anything on my client at all,” Clarke said. “They took his vest. He answered their questions. He didn’t have a gun. He didn’t have brass knuckles. He was riding in an SUV. He went there to go to a meeting, but that doesn’t make you guilty of organized crime.”
Rosas and a couple of friends had just gotten to Twin Peaks and were getting out of their vehicle when a “minor riot” broke out between the Cossacks and Bandidos, Clarke said.
“But my client had no foreknowledge of anything that was going on between those groups, and they didn’t go up there to participate in any violent outbreak,” Clarke said. “Honestly, I believe probably 100 or more bikers are in the same posture. Some may have gone up there with bad intentions, but I don’t think the majority did.”
Corsicana attorney John Jackson, a solo practitioner hired to represent Ronald Atterbury, a Cossack from Gatesville, said he might have to hire someone to assist him in reviewing the discovery as it continues to come in waves.
“I haven’t run across anything yet that applies to my client,” Jackson said.
Jackson and Clarke said defense attorneys involved in the Twin Peaks cases have been given five rounds of discovery from the DA’s office, which is required by statute to provide any and all evidence to the defense, regardless of whether the evidence points to guilt or innocence.
The DA’s office recalled the sixth round of evidence last month after it was discovered some of the bikers’ cellphone images that were released contained child pornography.
As a former Navarro County district attorney and former state district judge, Jackson said he appreciates the task Reyna’s office is dealing with because of the massive amount of evidence collected during the chaotic event.
“It would be completely debilitating,” Jackson said. “I don’t understand how they can do it. It is a massive undertaking.”
Jackson said other lawyers may be hesitant to push ahead to trial until they have had time to review all the evidence, including some that might tend to exonerate their clients.
Massive cost
In the meantime, county officials are contemplating how to fund the huge expense of prosecuting all the cases. McLennan County Auditor Stan Chambers said the county has paid $62,026 so far in court-appointed attorneys’ fees. That total will multiply dramatically as the cases drag on and as the 70 to 80 court-appointed attorneys continue to review the mountain of discovery at $75 an hour for out-of-court time and $80 an hour for in-court time.
As the first cases are tried in McLennan County, the potential remains for changes of venue for remaining defendants. Trying the cases away from Waco would double or triple the cost to the county, officials say.
As more bikers go to trial, their attorneys likely will feel the need to hire experts in a number of subjects, including ballistics, crime scene analysis, DNA and others, which also will increase the costs to the county.
And it has been suggested the DA’s office could upgrade the charges against a few of the bikers to capital murder and seek the death penalty in those cases. Capital murder cases are extremely expensive and include year after year of appeals if there are convictions.
Even 18 months later, it is not possible to say how much the entire prosecution of the Twin Peaks cases will cost McLennan County, officials say.
Continue to believe the nonsense as you wish. It will be ten years, at least before they release the ballistics. The fact they aren’t supports everything I have been saying and nothing you have misrepresented as “facts”. When that day comes you will, at last have to admit the obvious truth. Alas, if you are my age you won’t live to see it.
Continue to believe, as you like, that the only people on earth who would fire the first round in a gunfight at the brainstem were all present that day and, tragically, now they are all dead because of their incredible proficiency with handguns that don’t exist they are all now dead and cannot share with us the secrets of not only their amazing marksmanship but where that obtained firearms that could perform these feats and then mysteriously vanish. I know that is your story and you sure seemed to be determined to believe it. Actually, I doubt even you believe it.
“because of their incredible proficiency with handguns that don’t exist they are all now dead and cannot share with us the secrets of not only their amazing marksmanship but where that obtained firearms that could perform these feats “
David Martinez, 45, pulled out a 32-caliber pistol, started shooting, and then hid the weapon in the back of someone else’s car, police said.
A search of his motorcycle later found a Glock 40-caliber handgun with a box of bullets, police said.
Source: Dallas Bandido Opened Fire in Waco Shootout: Police | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth
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Unlike you, my ten years of looking at patients and their CT scans , real people who had been shot by real handguns, together with my years in the military and reviewing military textbooks on wounds, I KNOW what I am looking at when I read the autopsies. As I have pointed out to you repeatedly, yes, REPEATEDLY, the only wound in those autopsies that was produced by a handgun was the belly wound that failed to penetrate the abdominal wall.
If you want to believe a .32 cal. Seecamp can penetrate the calvarium and then shatter the Petrous Bone, have at it. No one who knows what they are talking about will agree with you but delusions are like that.
“If you want to believe a .32 cal. Seecamp can penetrate the calvarium and then shatter the Petrous Bone”
If you are referring to my post, please quote it correctly. It did not say it shattered the Petrous ‘bone’.
Give it up. If these people all killed each other with handguns, the ballistics would be out. The photos of the crime scene with the little yellow cones where spent casings were found interspersed among the dead would be released. The ballistics matching the projectiles and wounds to the spent casings would be in the ballistics report. The fact that, while these things exist they are being held secret continues to make it obvious to even the most intellectually impaired that these people did NOT kill each other with handguns for if that were the case everything would be out and the entire affair would be closed. In fact, if these people DID kill each other there was no need to arrest almost two hundred people.
There is quite literally, no evidence to support the allegation that these people killed each other with hand guns and yet you continue to insist it is true. Remarkable.
Are you forgetting the eyewitness reports?
No, I am remembering we have yet to see any physical evidence to corroborate the “eyewitnesses”.
Autopsy physical evidence correlates to eyewitness testimony.
Try this exercise. Find ONE HANDGUN that was SEEN to have been fired by an “eyewitness” that was entered into evidence and comment about the spent casings in cylinders or ammo remaining in the magazine and match at least SOME estimate of the number of rounds fired and then corroborate that with a wound described in an autopsy and the supporting ballistics.
Do that and get back to me. I have challenged you to do this months ago and you have yet to do so in all this time.
Go on, and the gun was...and it had been fired...and those round struck...and in the autopsied that WITNESSED wound is described as...and the ballistics recovered from the projectile were...
Good luck.
Already done.
Then it should be easy to post!
It has been posted. The dude, the gun, the dash cam, the witness, the autopsy ... all consistent!
Yeah, sure. It’s so easy you just can’t do it.
In fact, I will make it easy for you. Fill in the form.
The gun with fingerprints aching the alleged perp identified by the eyewitness was: ___________ (Colt .38 revolver, Glock 19, etc.)
This handgun had been fired:______ times.
Of these rounds _____ struck victim _________ ___# of times.
The trajectories of these wounds correspond to the testimony given and can be found in the autopsy here:_________.
The projectiles recovered from the wound and scene demonstrate that this (these) wound(s) were caused by rounds fired from this weapon by matching the rifling found on the projectile with the bore as published here:_________
Have at it. Your next post should have all the blanks full.
In fact, I will make it easy for you. Fill in the form.
The gun with fingerprints aching the alleged perp identified by the eyewitness was: ___________ (Colt .38 revolver, Glock 19, etc.)
This handgun had been fired:______ times.
Of these rounds _____ struck victim _________ ___# of times.
“Every one was killed with a shot to the head by a rifle.”
Then please fill in your proof:
The trajectories of these wounds correspond to the testimony given and can be found in the autopsy here:_________.
The projectiles recovered from the wound and scene demonstrate that this (these) wound(s) were caused by rounds fired from this weapon by matching the rifling found on the projectile with the bore as published here:_________
Have at it. Your next post should have all the blanks full.
Mines easy. The three or four rifles that the police used to fire some 120 plus rounds killed all these folks. Every fatal wound was fired by a .223 rifle. Done.
Still waiting for you. Like I said, you can’t.
“Done”
Done? You haven’t provided one iota of anything to substantiate your falsehoods!
And you can’t fill in the form.
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