Posted on 11/19/2017 6:26:59 PM PST by Elderberry
For months, District Attorney Abel Reyna and his staff made clear they were champing at the bit to try strapping, 35-year-old Dallas Bandidos chieftain and locomotive engineer Jake Carrizal before any of the other bikers rounded up after the deadly 2015 shootout at Waco’s Twin Peaks restaurant and watering hole. Consequently, many of us in the peanut gallery leaned closer to better understand, perchance appreciate, Reyna’s strategy of legally pursuing 154 bikers on identical organized crime charges, as opposed to the more discriminating capital murder charges Waco police originally contemplated.
So much for that idea. The Nov. 10 mistrial only confirmed the whispered doubts of legal eagles in and out of the McLennan County Courthouse. Instead of prosecutorial genius and skill, the public witnessed a strange element of disorganization astonishing for a team that had many months to prepare for a high-profile trial of national significance. The fireworks mainly involved eruptions by diminutive, peppery defense counsel Casie Gotro over one piece of evidence after another that prosecutors by law should have provided her long before but didn’t.
But for those expressing amazement a mistrial wasn’t declared earlier because of repeated failures by prosecutors to furnish discovery evidence promptly, they got one anyway courtesy of a deadlocked jury. Jurors were unconvinced of Reyna’s organized crime scheme, rendered more convoluted and more bewildering in a superseding indictment of Carrizal in June. And afterward as Carrizal walked to the courthouse parking lot glowing and still a free man, disturbing new questions arose about Reyna, including his allegedly dropping criminal cases to benefit moneyed political donors and friends. The sworn claim of cronyism and corruption came the very same day from one of Reyna’s former prosecutors, who bolstered suggestions that political ambition guided Reyna’s actions immediately after the Twin Peaks incident, confounding police
(Excerpt) Read more at wacotrib.com ...
tldr: Some times an article begs to be summarized and posted with a link rather than just posting a link.
Some of us imho are just not into the waco trial, but we would like to get a decent whiff of injustice to interest us into reading such an article.
Thanks,,,,,,later read
The Jake Carrizal mistrial now represents the weak prosecutorial link between the conviction of 62-year-old Fort Worth Bandidos president Howard Baker, sentenced in Fort Worth to 45 years for murder, engaging in organized crime and directing activities of a street gang in connection with the 2014 slaying of a rival gang member at a Fort Worth bar, and federal indictments in San Antonio of former national Bandidos president Jeffrey Pike and vice president John Portillo on racketeering charges, including murder. Several alleged Bandidos have signed plea deals in the latter case, involving the murder of a man who sought to form a chapter of the California-based Hells Angels in Bandidos-dominated Texas. That leaves McLennan County officials pondering the extremely expensive proposition of further court action involving 154 indicted Twin Peaks bikers — including, once more, Jake Carrizal. It also complicates matters for District Attorney Abel Reyna, who critics allege overplayed his hand by allowing political ambition to override a police investigation unlike any undertaken in the United States — and casting many bikers, attorneys and law enforcement personnel into a legal labyrinth as confounding as the nation’s resilient outlaw biker culture.
As a non-lawyer, much less a defense attorney I find this series of youtubes of extreme interest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu1pEVw-214
Thanks!
Thanks to all for the updates
FYI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZYnCpU5vx8
Watching it now. If these “proceedings” are televised/recorded, it’d be interesting to have a timeline of links.
Bookmark for later viewing. Thanks!
IBTG
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