Posted on 08/30/2011 5:41:50 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco's biggest gang trial in many years ended today when a jury convicted six men of racketeering and conspiracy as members of MS-13, a crime organization that waged war against rivals and defectors in San Francisco's Mission District and was found responsible for at least three 2008 murders.
A seventh defendant, Walter Cruz-Zavala, was acquitted. The six men face up to life in prison when sentenced Nov. 30.
Jurors deliberated for a week after a federal court trial that lasted more than four months. Prosecutors portrayed the young men as leaders or soldiers of a heavily armed gang that controlled its territory, ..
The prosecution's case relied in part on informants, six former gang members who pleaded guilty, secretly tape-recorded conversations with the defendants and testified in exchange for lesser sentences.
Defense lawyers questioned them intensely about inconsistencies in their accounts over time and claimed that they had instigated many of the crimes, committed between 2005 and 2008. But U.S. District Judge William Alsup refused to give the jury the option of finding that the defendants had been entrapped, saying there was no evidence that they were induced to break the law.
Another 18 defendants who were indicted in 2008 have also pleaded guilty, including two men who were sentenced to 20 years each for the fatal stabbing of 14-year-old Ivan Miranda in the Excelsior district in July 2008. Two others await trial for a slaying outside the Daly City BART station in February 2009.
...
MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, was founded in Los Angeles in the 1980s by immigrants from El Salvador and has 8,000 to 10,000 members in the United States, according to the FBI. ..
Jurors found that three defendants committed murders to maintain or increase their status in the gang.
...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Bittersweet — though MS-13 is a mean, wicked, evil thorn in the side of the US, and I do not weep a drop to see them canned, do we really need judges who order jurors what to think concerning questions of fact? That sounds like a new one on me, even given increasing concerns over judicial activism. Plus as a matter of law it opens up a hole for an appeal and an opportunity for an appeals court to further open up a can of worms.
6 out of thousands? Until someone figures out a way to annihilate these animals, they are here to stay.
He’s willing to let a higher court overrule this mess if they want, in the meantime , they are off the street..
I wouldn’t worry about appeals, there’s no death penalty here or anytime soon,, the ones that weren’t murderers will probably be released early anyway.. deported? we’ll see who’s in office then.
>>Bittersweet — though MS-13 is a mean, wicked, evil thorn in the side of the US, and I do not weep a drop to see them canned, do we really need judges who order jurors what to think concerning questions of fact? That sounds like a new one on me, even given increasing concerns over judicial activism. Plus as a matter of law it opens up a hole for an appeal and an opportunity for an appeals court to further open up a can of worms.<<
Don’t kvetch too much.
Any legal line of reasoning has to have a foundation. A judge can find, as a matter of law, that a line does not have sufficient facts to support the foundation of the line of reasoning. “Hey, my client was distracted by a blue tunafish flying by him” isn’t a valid legal argument unless you can lay down a reasonable factual basis.
Otherwise, counsel (on either side) could just slap anything that comes into their imaginations onto the Jury and then say “it is a question of fact.”
Very VERY few appeals are granted. Appeals are not a “redo.” They are extremely technical arguments about points of law only.
It is highly unlikely an appellate court will overturn this decision since the Judge decided (probably accurately) there was no foundation.
Appeals might as well be a “redo” if the appellate court decides the issue at hand tainted the trial.
Why not permit the defense to propose a clearly unjustified theory if he’s guilty as sin? That would only get unsympathy from the jury. In the meantime, everyone else’s jury trial rights will not be chipped away at by example. If I were on that jury I might say that I cannot constrain my thoughts to what the judge ordered, and so that if I believed “entrapment” happened I would be conscience bound to vote not guilty.
>>Why not permit the defense to propose a clearly unjustified theory if he’s guilty as sin? <<
Two words: Casey Anthony. They snuck their alternatives through the back door and it worked.
Every direct argument needs a legal and factual foundation. It is just the way the law works.
***MS-13, a crime organization****
we need a scene out of the movie TOMBSTONE.
“When I see a MS-13 tattoo I kill the man that’s wearing it! You tell them I’m coming, and HELL is coming with me!
Now hang those convicted.
Ping!
And that is exactly what the jury is there to judge.
>>And that is exactly what the jury is there to judge.<<
Not according to American Jurisprudence.
And rightly so.
The judges say that’s right, but historically juries were permitted to judge both facts and law. You are simply saying judges stick up for judges, which is a chilling tautology.
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