I foolishly thought I would have time to get more done this week…
Archive for the ‘Crime’ Category
LinkSwarm for April 27, 2018
Friday, April 27th, 2018Great Moments in Mail Fraud
Tuesday, April 24th, 2018This story is pretty amazing, featuring equal parts of both stupidity and chutzpah:
The timeworn apartment building in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood hardly looks like the corporate headquarters of one of the world’s largest shipping companies.
But for a few recent months, that’s essentially what it became — at least as far as the U.S. Postal Service was concerned.
Federal court papers unsealed last week revealed an astonishing but ultimately bungled scheme to file a change-of-address form claiming that shipping giant United Parcel Service had moved its headquarters from a bustling business park in Atlanta to a tiny garden apartment.
Not only did the change go through, but it also took months for anyone to catch on. In the meantime, so many thousands of pieces of first-class mail meant for UPS poured into Apartment L2 at 6750 N. Ashland Ave. that a mail carrier had to bring in a tub to hold it all, a search warrant application filed in U.S. District Court disclosed.
Among the correspondence were letters meant for the company’s CEO and other executives, sensitive documents containing personal information, as well as corporate credit cards and tens of thousands of dollars in business checks, according to an affidavit from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service submitted with the warrant.
It wasn’t until the resident, Dushaun Spruce, allegedly deposited nearly $60,000 in UPS checks into his bank account in late January that UPS was alerted to the alleged scam, court papers say.
In a brief interview last week with a Chicago Tribune reporter, Spruce acknowledged that authorities had served a warrant on him in January and seized mail, checkbooks, bank records and other documents from his apartment.
“They took things they weren’t supposed to,” said Spruce, 24, standing barefoot at the building’s main entrance.
While not disclosing Spruce’s name, the unsealed warrant contained other clues to his identity: both his current apartment number at the Ashland address as well as his previous address in the 1900 block of West Fargo Avenue. Public records listed both addresses for him.
Spruce has not been criminally charged and denies any wrongdoing. The investigation by postal inspectors and federal prosecutors continues, law enforcement sources said.
A spokesman for UPS confirmed that the company was recently notified that mail intended for UPS employees had been “redirected by an unauthorized change of address by a third party.” He declined further comment.
Snip.
It wasn’t until Jan. 16 — nearly three months after the address changes — that a UPS security coordinator caught on to the alleged scheme and notified postal inspectors, the court records show.
The security coordinator notified investigators that not only had UPS not authorized the change but it also appeared that about 150 corporate American Express cards in various employee names — including the CEO and members of the board of directors — had been issued under the Ashland Avenue address, the affidavit said.
It was later learned that only five cards had actually been shipped, and none had been misused, according to the affidavit.
The day after the alleged fraud was detected, postal inspectors interviewed the carrier who delivers the mail to Spruce’s building. The carrier said “voluminous” amounts of UPS mail had been coming to the apartment for months, far more than would fit in the small boxes assigned to tenants, the affidavit said.
To accommodate the deluge, the carrier “had to place the mail in a USPS tub and leave it at (Spruce’s) door,” the affidavit said.
The carrier, who at times also handed mail directly to Spruce, identified him from a photograph shown by the agents, according to the affidavit.
A week later, postal inspectors returned to the building and began retrieving “several thousand” pieces of first-class and registered mail addressed to UPS at Spruce’s apartment, the affidavit said. Agents found that some of the mail “contained personal identifying information of UPS employees as well as business checks mailed to UPS and accounts payable invoices,” according to the affidavit.
That same day, investigators at Fifth Third Bank notified postal inspectors that more than 10 checks addressed to UPS were deposited to a personal account belonging to Spruce. The checks totaled more than $58,000, according to the affidavit.
Agents reviewed bank surveillance footage and matched the person making the deposits to Spruce’s driver’s license photo, according to the affidavit.
The search warrant served on Jan. 26 contained a list of items to be seized from Spruce, including “all mail, parcels and packages” and any credit cards, checks, invoices or financial records “of any kind” that were linked to UPS.
Agents also planned to seize “all items associated with identity theft, including personal identifying information (and) devices used to manufacture credit cards,” according to the warrant.
Spruce has no felony convictions in his background. But a year before his alleged UPS scam began, he was arrested twice in a matter of days by Evanston police on minor drug charges and allegations of bank fraud, records show.
On Nov. 20, 2016, Evanston police pulled over Spruce’s Hyundai and found an open container of alcohol as well as at least 30 grams of marijuana, according to Cook County court records. He was charged with misdemeanor drug possession and driving on a suspended license — a case that prosecutors agreed to drop in exchange for 40 hours of community service.
It’s obvious that Mr. Spruce is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but you can’t say he lacks ambition. Protip: If you’re going to commit interstate mail fraud, do not use your home address. You use a third party mail address, address for a dummy company (I would have gone with “United Package Systems”), which is in turn registered to a another dummy company in the Cayman Islands. You deposit the UPS checks in the “United Package Systems” account, then transfer the money to a Cayman Islands account, and then to your secret Swiss bank account, and you shut everything down and skip town at the first sign anyone’s caught on.
Geeze, do I have to tell you people everything?
Mr. Spruce does not seem to have put this much (or indeed any) forethought into his little caper, and he’s very lucky that he’s not headed to a federal prison even as we speak. I’m guessing that both UPS and USPS are trying to figure out how such a stupid fraud worked for any length of time at all. Did UPS just not receive any mail for a few months and not notice?
And did not Mr. Spruce’s local mail carrier express suspicions the first time they deposited a tub full of mail addressed to UPS to his apartment?
LinkSwarm for April 20, 2018
Friday, April 20th, 2018Finished my taxes! Now I need to go back and do all the stuff I let slide while I was doing my taxes…
The attack on April 13th went up against a 21st-century Russian superweapon–the S-400 Triumf air-defense system, a mobile state-of-the-art anti-aircraft and missile network featuring four distinct missile types targeting aircraft in any performance envelope from treetop level to high altitude – including stealth aircraft (at a range of 150 miles, yet). For a decade we have been assured by military analysts that the S-400 is a game-changer – a system that could rend the heavens in twain and call into question the very concept of air power under battlefield conditions.
And yet, last Friday, the epoch-making Triumf failed to let out so much as a peep as 105 cruise missiles trashed Bashar Assad’s chemical warfare plants. Not a single SAM left the rack while the attack was proceeding. (The Syrians did fire over 40 missiles at nothing, but only after the attack was completed. This is standard behavior among Arab armed forces – the Libyans and Iraqis did the same thing.) The Russians claim to have shot down over 70 of the attacking cruise missiles. How do we know this isn’t true? First, because the targets were utterly destroyed, and second, because the French were involved. If the Russians had shot down any U.S. missiles at all we would be hearing from Paris that American “missiles de croisière” are useless, and that’s why we had to turn to the French, who invented the cruise missile in 1689. (This is scarcely an exaggeration – Emmanuel Macron has gone on record to state that it was he, le président de la France, who persuaded Donald Trump to carry out the strike.)
Some might argue that the new AGM-158 JASSM stealth missile foxed the S-400, but half the missiles launched were actually thirty-year-old BGM-109 Tomahawks, the equivalent of Colt Peacemakers as far as the world of missile development is concerned. If the mighty S-400 can’t shoot down a thirty-year-old missile, what can it do?
Also this: “Russia today is what it always was – a Potemkin village hiding a nation in a state of suspended collapse.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Hours after being alerted by KrebsOnSecurity, Facebook last week deleted almost 120 private discussion groups totaling more than 300,000 members who flagrantly promoted a host of illicit activities on the social media network’s platform. The scam groups facilitated a broad spectrum of shady activities, including spamming, wire fraud, account takeovers, phony tax refunds, 419 scams, denial-of-service attack-for-hire services and botnet creation tools. The average age of these groups on Facebook’s platform was two years.
Former presidential candidate Evan McMullin owes his former campaign staff members tens of thousands of dollars and most believe he has no intention of ever paying them, a former campaign worker tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Right before McMullin’s failed bid for president in 2016 as the conservative alternative to President Donald Trump, the campaign was inundated with debt. The disastrous fiscal situation was a combination of frivolous spending by McMullin and his campaign manager Joel Searby, according to the former staffer.
McMullin received news weeks before Election Day 2016 about how dire the campaign’s finances were, and he had “no remorse” and said “I have qualms about this thing ending badly in debt,” the former staffer claimed. McMullin’s cavalier attitude towards the campaign’s spending struck many as a surprise, particularly because he billed himself as a fiscal conservative, he added.
The staffer also claims the campaign never paid him somewhere between 12-15 thousand dollars on top of a few thousand dollars in reimbursements. While he has since recovered, he expressed concern about former staffers with “families and children.”
I’ll never forget the first time I went to a steakhouse here. I thought I’d eaten steak before. I was expecting this small, flat circle of meat, maybe a couple of fries on the side. Fine. C’est bon.
So in Texas, steak is a different thing. I’m at this restaurant and they put this plate in front of me, and, well, there was barely any plate visible — all I saw was this was this big, big piece of meat. I look around, maybe I had been mistaken in what I ordered. Maybe this waiter was playing a prank on me. It looked like a whole farm animal in front of me. But everyone with me laughed and nodded and told me that in Texas, this is a steak.
Then I was introduced to these other foods I’d never seen before but were totally amazing. Mac and cheese, man. Guys, you are blessed for having mac and cheese here. It’s a work of art. Bravo, guys.
And that was the first time I thought, O.K. O.K., I think I can get used to this place.
But if he really wants to be “King of Books,” he should know that road runs through me…
In the Southern California's high desert, people are calling 911 for help because of an invasion of tumbleweeds. Read the story: https://t.co/LafXGcRPoz pic.twitter.com/X1KSj0VYdn
— AP West Region (@APWestRegion) April 18, 2018
Colonel demoted, immediately retired from Air National Guard over dinosaur puppet video https://t.co/IXp9yqn2SM pic.twitter.com/HhFdQp2arK
— Air Force Times (@AirForceTimes) April 18, 2018
Seems an overreaction. Let he who has never taken a sacred oath using a dinosaur handpuppet cast the first stone…
Hurst, Texas House Explodes on Dashcam
Thursday, April 19th, 2018And sometimes blogging is just “Whoa! I’ve got to post that!”
Story here. Thankfully, no one was killed, though one woman remains in the hospital.
Also this: “The driver was not hurt, but was taken into custody for not having a license, then transferred to federal custody on an immigration hold.”
Texas Democratic Lawyer Mark Benavides Sentenced to 80 Years in Prison for Sex Trafficking
Sunday, April 8th, 2018Democratic Lawyer Mark Benavides may be a small fish (he lost his only district court race), but his crimes stand out for their sheer depravity:
A Wilson County jury on Friday sentenced a former San Antonio attorney to 80 years in prison on each of the six counts he faced for coercing clients into sex.
Mark Henry Benavides will have to serve at least 30 years before he is eligible for parole.
Snip.
“This is human trafficking,” Chacon said. “He transported, coerced, threatened and made them feel they had no choice. This jury understood that.”
Benavides was convicted Tuesday of continuous trafficking of persons and faces 25 to 99 years or life in prison. Six women he had represented in prostitution or drug cases testified he coerced them into having sex to keep them out of jail or lessen their legal troubles, and videotaped the encounters, which were shown to the jury.
Investigators seized 246 mini DVDs that contained hundreds of videos of Benavides and the former clients engaged in various sex acts, in which he could be heard directing the women and telling them what to do and say.
During the trial, San Antonio Police Department detective Manual Morales testified that police found a filing cabinet at Benavides’ home containing 246 of what the detective called “pornographic DVDs” that showed Benavides having sex with women who police said were Benavides’ clients.
Some of the graphic and sexually explicit videos were played for jurors. A video was so graphic that a female juror fainted as the panel left the courtroom last Tuesday.
The women testified that in addition to recordings made in a motel, Benavides also had sex with them in jury and witness rooms at the courthouse.
At least one of the victims in the indictment was a minor.
I’m seeing various reports that Benavides’ coerced sex acts involved torture, but I am unable to find any mainstream media reports confirming those allegations, despite the fainting juror. Might have to wait for the official trial transcript…
Waco Biker Trials Update Update
Thursday, April 5th, 2018Somehow, when compiling the info for this piece on Waco biker trial news, I missed this update, which notes the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office dismissed cases against Cody Ledbetter and George Bergman.
Ledbetter, who has said he has been ready to go to trial for almost three years because he didn’t commit a crime, witnessed his stepfather, Daniel Boyett, get shot during the May 2015 brawl at the former Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco between two rival biker groups. Boyett died from his wounds.
“Give me a break,” [Ledbetter’s attorney Paul] Looney said Monday after learning of the dismissal. “Cody never should have been filed on in the first place. He has had this case hanging over his head for three years and when we finally get a trial setting, they say never mind. That is just cruel beyond description. My client has lived with the thought of 15 years to life in prison for nearly three years on a case I guess they never prepared for trial or never intended to prepare for trial.”
Neither McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna nor Jarrett returned phone messages Monday.
Looney, who called the Twin Peaks cases “the most bizarre saga in the history of American criminal law,” added that he is happy for Ledbetter but “just repulsed at the system.”
“It looks like they have mishandled this case to the point that nine people died and nobody gets prosecuted. How bizarre. This is an impossible outcome. That can’t be the case, but it looks like they are going to end up there,” he said.
In other Waco biker trial news, “Senior U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, of Austin, conducted a status conference Monday in a portion of the 133 Twin Peaks civil rights suits and extended by at least 90 days a stay that has been in place for almost two years.”
Meanwhile, in San Antonio, Bandidos members John Xavier Portillo and Jeffrey Fay Pike are on trial for federal racketeering charges.
Voltron of Sucky Religions Update
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2018Remember my piece on the teamup between Scientology and the Nation of Islam?
Well, there’s more on that subject:
An independent Scientology news service, @IndieScieNews, first tipped me off to the connection. On October 20, the Church of Scientology honored the Nation of Islam’s Tony Muhammed with its Freedom Award in Inglewood, Calif., in recognition of his “humanitarian” efforts. What, exactly, are those efforts? Muhammed travels the world showing a documentary on vaccines, claiming they cause autism. Just this week, Nation of Islam members held a blessing and naming ceremony for Tony Muhammed at the Scientology Land Base Chapel in Clearwater, Fla.
The individual behind IndieScientologyNews told me:
The extent of the integration of Scientology into the Nation of Islam is demonstrated by the fact that members of the Nation of Islam are not only practicing the religion of Scientology, they are also becoming Ministers and Ministers-in-Training of the Church of Scientology.
The connection between the two groups goes far deeper than just a gala or a naming ceremony. One of the stars of Leah Remini’s docuseries, Aaron Smith-Levin, laid out the financial connection and the incentive for Nation of Islam members to become involved in the Church of Scientology, and vice versa. Smith-Levin explained to me:
Louis Farrakhan is entitled to personally receive a 10% commission on all money NOI members pay for Scientology auditing and a 15% commission on all money NOI members pay for Scientology courses. I don’t know what Farrakhan’s compensation plan is within the NOI, but with ~40,000+ NOI members, the relationship between the NOI & the Church of Scientology, Farrakhan stands to personally earn an awful lot of cash.
During his keynote address to members of the Nation of Islam last year, Farrakhan seemed to take aim at Remini. Writing at his blog, Ortega explains,
He then cited a chapter from the Koran, and used it to say that he was interested in useful knowledge, whatever its source.
“I’m just setting the record straight. I’m not a Scientologist but I respect L. Ron Hubbard. I know that this is the time that they’re making an all out move to destroy Scientology. But what I ask Mrs. Remmy, or whatever her name is, she’s going in hard. She’s hurt, by something.”
Farrakhan then seemed to go on a tangent, talking about his followers looking for understanding but worrying that it was coming from sources that weren’t “perfect.” It was difficult to tell whether this was another reference to Hubbard and Scientology. But he concluded this section of remarks with this line: “The more we strive to make ourselves better, the better we will become in being disciples of Christ or Muhammad or anybody we think we should follow.”
The message seemed pretty clear: Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam will stand by the Church of Scientology as it is marked for destruction by a hurt Leah Remini.
And both, of course, are willing to silence their critics and defecting former members by any means necessary…
LinkSwarm for March 30, 2018
Friday, March 30th, 2018Happy Good Friday! Spring has sprung and I’m knee-deep in my taxes.
When a media source such as Mother Jones or Everytown for Gun Safety implies that “we have a gun problem,” they are making exactly the same reasoning error as if they said, “we have a black people problem.”
And black population was six times more predictive than gun ownership was.
In an extensive report from BuzzFeed, cartoonist John Kricfalusi—the creator of iconic Nickelodeon series Ren & Stimpy—has been accused of sexually exploiting teenage girls, promising them careers in animation at his studio Spumco while allegedly grooming them for sexual relationships. One of the women, Robyn Byrd, says it all began in 1994 when she was only 13, after she sent Kricfalusi a video of herself talking about how she wanted a career in animation and how important Ren & Stimpy was to her. Kricfalusi, who was 39 at the time, responded by sending her packages of toys and art supplies, and eventually he helped her set up an AOL account so they could communicate more regularly.
Kricfalusi visited Byrd at her home and told her that she could “become a great artist,” and later he invited her out to Los Angeles, where she says he “touched her genitals through her pajamas” while they were at his house. She was 16. In 1997, Kricfalusi gave Byrd an internship at Spumco; she lived with him during this period, prompting him to allegedly call her “his 16-year-old girlfriend.” Convinced that he was helping her launch the career of her dreams, Byrd moved in with Kricfalusi once she graduated from high school.
Apparently, this was all an open secret in the animation world at the time, partly due to an interview Kricfalusi gave with Howard Stern in which he creepily noted that a “hot chick with big cans and nice legs” he had drawn for a comic book was “underage, too.” People working at Spumco allegedly shrugged off the relationship between Byrd and Kricfalusi, with another former intern noting that Kricfalusi once “left out a drawing he made of Byrd, naked, with a dog ejaculating on her.”
Waco Biker Trials Update
Thursday, March 29th, 2018The wheels of (in)justice seem to be grinding ever on in the endless string of (non)trials resulting from the 2015 Twin Peaks Waco biker shootout.
First, another of the bikers arrested in the shootout is now headed to trial on April 2:
Cody Ledbetter has been trying to get his day in court for almost three years as the specter of witnessing his stepfather’s death in the 2015 Twin Peaks shootout and his pending indictment hang over his life.
Ledbetter and his attorney, Paul Looney, of Houston, got their wish Monday when 54th State District Judge Matt Johnson gave them the April 2 trial date initially reserved for the retrial of Jacob Carrizal, president of the Dallas Bandidos chapter, whose November trial ended in a mistrial.
Ledbetter’s stepfather, Daniel Boyett, was shot and killed at Twin Peaks during the Sunday afternoon brawl between members of the Bandidos and Cossacks motorcycle groups and their support clubs, and Ledbetter’s life has been turned upside down while the first-degree felony charge hangs over his head.
Carrizal’s trial ended in mistrial in November after jurors could not reach unanimous verdicts on any of the counts against him. The McLennan County District Attorney’s Office hand-picked Carrizal to be tried first among 154 bikers indicted at the time in the Twin Peaks case.
On Monday, Carrizal’s new attorney, Christopher Lewis, of Dallas, filed a motion for continuance in the case, telling Johnson he is set for trial in federal court in Dallas on the same day. He also said he received 1.9 terabytes of discovery from the DA’s office on Feb. 12 and needs more time to adequately review the materials and prepare for trial.
With a trial date available, Looney and Ledbetter, a 28-year-old diesel mechanic with no criminal record, jumped in.
“It is just time to go in and lay the cards on the table and let the jury exonerate this man,” Looney said. “He has been innocent and on bond for three years. That is a torture that no innocent person should have to go through. It is time for it to stop, and we are finally in front of a group of people who can finally make it stop.”
Looney filed a motion to disqualify McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna in October after it was discovered that the DA’s office released videos from Ledbetter’s cellphone that showed Ledbetter and his wife having sex. The videos were sent to more than 125 attorneys as part of the massive Twin Peaks discovery process.
In news you may have missed, the charges against thirteen of the bikers were dismissed in February:
An attorney for one of the bikers indicted in the deadly 2015 Twin Peaks shootout said it appears the “Twin Peaks dam” is starting to break with the dismissal of charges against 13 bikers Thursday.
Meanwhile, the same attorney, Brian Bouffard, said McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna only dropped the cases in a show of “moral cowardice by an elected official” to avoid adverse testimony at a scheduled Thursday hearing to disqualify his office.
Two district judges signed orders submitted to them by the DA’s office Thursday morning dismissing charges against 13 bikers arrested in the May 17, 2015, Twin Peaks shootout and two recusing the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office in two other biker cases.
Besides the 13 dismissals, prosecutor Michael Jarrett told the judges that Reyna also intends to formally refuse eight more cases against bikers who were arrested, but have not been indicted in the shootout that left nine dead and dozens injured.
The dismissals came hours before a hearing scheduled for Thursday afternoon at which two bikers were asking to disqualify Reyna from handling their cases on a variety of grounds.
That hearing was canceled in light of Reyna’s actions.
Reyna did not return phone calls seeking comment Thursday and declined to provide the Tribune-Herald with a written statement he prepared about the dismissals.
Judge Ralph Strother, of Waco’s 19th State District Court, said Thursday he plans to ask the Texas Attorney General’s Office prosecutorial assistance division to take over prosecution of the case against biker Billy McRee. Reyna agreed to recuse his office in that case, while he dismissed the case against Jorge Salinas.
Salinas, a two-tour Marine combat veteran; and McRee, a mechanic, are both former members of the Cossacks motorcycle group.
Salinas, who said he was sitting in a deer blind when he was notified his case had been dismissed, said he became emotional at the news. He said he is grateful, but that the decision came too late and at too high a cost to him and his family.
Salinas, his family and Bouffard, of Fort Worth, spoke at a press conference Thursday that also included McRee and his family; and his attorney, David Conrad Beyer, also of Fort Worth; and Dallas attorney Clint Broden.
Broden, who represents two bikers indicted in the incident, said they chose the first-floor courthouse rotunda as the location of the press conference because it was there that Reyna held a press conference almost three years ago to announce that he had, as Broden characterized it, “bamboozled” a grand jury into indicting 154 bikers on identical charges after the shootout.
“My client is a decorated Marine combat veteran,” Bouffard said. “He and I took the same oath years ago. Part of that oath is that we will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And I ask you and I ask the public to ask yourselves, what better definition of a domestic enemy of our Constitution than Abel Reyna?”
The attorneys charged that Reyna only decided to drop the charges and to recuse his office in McRee’s case to escape being placed under oath at the disqualification hearing and to prevent the adverse testimonies of former and current members of his staff, some of whom have reported alleged abuses of his office to Texas Rangers and the FBI.
“The Twin Peaks dam has now broken, and with each new dismissal that may come, the public will see clearly what Twin Peaks defense counsel have known for almost three years — that Abel Reyna arrested, charged, and indicted a very large number of these men for purely political reasons, apparently without any intent to take them to trial,” Bouffard said in a statement Thursday morning.
“Though it took far too long, we pushed Mr. Reyna’s back to the wall and he finally had nowhere else to run.”
And what about Mr. Reyna himself, the prosecutor who has yet to bring a single charge of murder in an incident where nine people died, but was more than willing to file conspiracy charges against bikers for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? He lost in the Republican primary:
Barry Johnson, who beat Reyna in the Republican primary, made the bungled prosecution of more than a hundred bikers a central issue of his campaign. The years since the shootout, he argued, have been marked by misconduct, suppressed evidence, and overreach.
According to the official story, two rival motorcycle gangs got into a turf war outside a local Twin Peaks restaurant, and then turned their guns on police officers who tried to intervene. Nine of the bikers were killed in the shootout and 20 more were wounded. But investigative reporters have cast doubt on this narrative, suggesting instead that police overreacted to a small skirmish and escalated the fight. Police were responsible for at least four of the nine deaths, according to evidence obtained by the Associated Press.
Snip.
Reyna’s office ultimately pursued charges against more than 150 bikers under the argument that even individuals who weren’t involved in the fight were guilty by their attendance alone. More than 100 bikers have since sued Waco for wrongful arrest. Their cases could cost the city more than a billion dollars.
Prosecutors were caught repeatedly withholding evidence during the first and, thus far, only biker trial. A Texas Ranger relayed that Reyna had specifically instructed him to keep evidence away from the defense team.
“At one point in the trial, [the defense attorney’s] discoveries of withheld evidence had become so regular that [the judge] ordered Reyna to instruct his prosecutors and all law enforcement agencies involved in the Twin Peaks investigation to go back and search their files to make sure all materials had been disclosed to the defense as required by law,” the Waco Tribune reported.
That trial ended with a deadlocked jury in November. Since then, Reyna has dismissed more than 50 biker cases and recused his office from another to avoid a disqualification hearing. The bikers’ defense attorneys subpoenaed several of Reyna’s employees and a retired police detective to testify about the DA’s misconduct and corruption.
Assuming he wins in November, Johnson has his job cut out for him cleaning up Abel Reyna’s mess…
(Hat tip: Dwight.)