agingrebel.com
The end is near. The remaining defendants in the Rock Hell Nomads racketeering trial in Columbia, South Carolina could walk free as early as next Thursday.
The first shoe dropped today when Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed all charges against Donald “Brooklyn Donnie” Boersma. Currie granted a “Rule 29 Motion” filed by Boersma’s lawyer, Herb Louthian. Rule 29 is one of 61 Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Rule 29 states:
“After the government closes its evidence or after the close of all the evidence, the court on the defendant’s motion must enter a judgment of acquittal of any offense for which the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction. The court may on its own consider whether the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction. If the court denies a motion for a judgment of acquittal at the close of the government’s evidence, the defendant may offer evidence without having reserved the right to do so.”
Currie ruled, in other words, that Boersma didn’t need to present a defense because the prosecution had failed to prove him guilty.
Shortened Trial
The prosecutors, two men named James Hunter May and Julius N. “Jay” Richardson, have embarrassed themselves with this case. If there is any justice, neither of them will ever again be welcome in any lawyer bar in the south. The government, after almost ten months of wrecking homes, families and lives, appears about to throw in the towel.The Department of Justice has tried to prove that, as one South Carolina journalist put it, the 20 defendants indicted last June and then again last September constituted a “red neck Mafia” because most of them were affiliated in some way, sometimes by marriage, with members of the Southern Gentlemen, Red Devils and Hells Angels Motorcycle Clubs.
The trial was supposed to last six weeks. The prosecution’s star witness, a grifter named Joe Dillulio, was supposed to regale the jury with his inventive tales for two weeks. Dillulio, along with an apparently sociopathic FBI Agent named Devon P. Mahoney, cooked up a wild scheme to glorify and enrich themselves by framing a score of bikers in the Carolinas. Provably, Dillulio is already about four hundred grand ahead on this travesty. Mahoney, interestingly, pops up in another whodunit this page has been investigating for more than four years, the framing of Dave Burgess. If Mahoney wanted to be looked at, his wish has now come true.
Dillulio was virtually tarred and feathered on the witness stand by a couple of advocates named John Delgado and Joshua Kendrick. That was about the time Richardson and May began to softly weep. Their tears erased half their witness list. ATF super agent John Ciccone and professional parasite Jorge Gil-Blanco, who were to demonize the Hells Angels, have now been told to stay home. So sometime college professor William Dulaney, a biker expert with a different point of view, won’t be called to rebut them.
An informed source in Columbia explained Thursday afternoon, “the government’s case imploded.”
Soon
The defense of Mark William Baker, David Channing Oiler, Bruce James Long and Thomas McManus Plyler should begin next week. So far Richardson and May have shown the jury a big pile of drugs and a big pile of guns and has wrapped that alleged contraband in a narrative the government spent years and millions polishing.Given the devastating effect Mahoney and Dillulio have had on the jury so far it is possible that all four defendants will walk out of court as free men.
That will leave unresolved the fates of two of the more interesting defendants, Daniel Eugene “Diamond Dan” Bifield and his wife Lisa Bifield. The Bifield’s, who genuinely love one another, were heartlessly manipulated by the scoundrels who imagined this case and its mostly imaginary crimes. Both pled guilty soon after Christmas.
Dan Bifield withdrew his plea ten days ago. Lisa Bifield is now attempting to withdraw her plea and hire a new lawyer. It is possible that the two of them might go on trial together – a handsome, likable couple with their own harrowing tales to tell. Dan Bifield insisted a month ago that his wife would never testify. He was right. He has insisted since last June that he was framed.
Richardson, May and Mahoney might be stupid and arrogant enough to actually let him tell a jury that. And, tell a jury what those three men have done to him and his family and his friends.