agingrebel.com
Matt Starkweather’s 50-month-long ordeal by prosecution continues to mock the ever more vague concept of “justice.”
Starkweather, 36, is a member of the
Battle Creek, Michigan chapter of the Iron Coffins Motorcycle Club. In
the wee small hours of New Year’s Day 2012 he fell into an argument,
during a party at the clubhouse, with former chapter president Lee J.
“Leeroy” Taylor – allegedly over $2,500 that Taylor owed Starkweather.
The men came to blows twice.. The first time Starkweather prevailed. The
second time, Taylor emerged from a bathroom with a baton and a knife.
He knocked Starkweather down and stabbed him in the neck. Two other
chapter members, John Lindahl III and Mario “Paco” Barroso beat Taylor
with the butt of a shotgun until he rolled off Starkweather.
Taylor soon died. Starkweather called
the police and was arrested for murder. In the coming weeks Lindahl and
Barroso were also arrested. The case was both maudlin and banal but it
was a motorcycle club case and motorcycle club cases glow. Homicide is
homicide as iron is iron but motorcycle club cases glow as hot iron
glows. Biker homicides and hot metal are both special cases and that
seems to explain the continuing legal crusade against Starkweather.
Barroso agreed to testify against both
Starkweather and Lindahl in return for leniency but his testimony was
disappointing and the charges against all three men were dismissed.
David Gilbert
Four months later a new prosecutor named
David Gilbert was elected. He craved the heat in the case and in
December 2014 he reopened it. He charged Barroso in March 2015 and
charged him with murder. Even a blind man could see that Barroso was
really being punished for failing to testify cogently enough to convict
Starkweather and Lindahl. Gilbert’s argument was that Barroso was a
murderer because he handed Lindahl the shotgun Lindahl used to beat
Taylor off Starkweather as Taylor was stabbing Starkweather in the neck.
Apparently the 67-year-old Barroso had a lawyer but he still agreed to
plead no contest to a charge of manslaughter and last year he was
sentenced to serve between 71 and 180 months in prison.
Starkweather was charged with murder
again in October 2015. He had already spent more than six months in jail
after he was charged the first time. He knew in advance that he would
be charged again and did not try to flee. But he was still sent back to
jail when he was rearrested, labeled a “flight risk” and denied bail
again.
United States
The case against Starkweather has always
been tainted as well as thin. Before he was elected Calhoun County
Prosecutor Gilbert had been a close associate of the lawyer representing
the third defendant, Lindahl. Lindahl’s lawyer was named Matt Glaser.
And earlier this year Glaser told the current judge in the case, Circuit
Judge John Hallacy, “I told Gilbert about the information from Lindahl.
I gave related attorney-client privileged information to Mr. Gilbert.”
Gilbert told Glaser he wanted to
participate in Lindahl’s defense for the “good press” it would lend to
his campaign for District Attorney. Gilbert also promised Glaser he
would never prosecute the case. But, it turned out, the future
prosecutor lied.
Hallacy ordered a special prosecutor, a
man named Victor Fitz, appointed to the case. By then, Starkweather had
spent 349 days in jail and Hallacy order the accused man to be released
to confinement at his parents’ home. At the time Judge Hallacy said that
indefinite detention without bail was something that “happens in third
world countries. This is the United States.”
0.002
Under the conditions of his release,
Starkweather couldn’t leave his parents’ property, drink alcohol or
associate with anyone in the Iron Coffins or anyone who was otherwise
connected to the case.
The morning after his release,
Starkweather attended a mandatory probation hearing. He was given and
flunked a breathalyzer test. For decades, the legal definition of
alcohol intoxication was a blood alcohol concentration of 0.10. The
legal definition of intoxication was eventually reduced 0.08.
Starkweather’s test indicated he had a blood alcohol concentration of
0.002 which was probably because he brushed his teeth that morning.
Starkweather had used Crest. Crest contains an alcohol called sorbitol.
The breathalyzer test found the sorbitol.
A deputy also claimed that Starkweather
had left the confines of his parent’s home three times the previous
night between two and five in the morning. He didn’t speculate why.
Starkweather spent another weekend in jail before he got the chance to
tell Hallacy “ I did not have anything to drink” and “I never left that
house.”
Hallacy told Starkweather to remember
that he was “under a microscope” and let him go home again. A couple of
days after that, Special Prosecutor Fitz admitted that Starkweather’s
GPS monitor had “apparently” malfunctioned.
No Trial Date
But the case, and its magic glow,
remains stuck in the mud. In arguing that Starkweather should be sent
back to jail, Fitz told Judge Hallacy that Starkweather had stabbed
himself in the neck to give himself a defense. Then last Thursday,
Hallacy removed Fitz from the case after Fitz admitted he had been
briefed by former prosecutor Gilbert on the information Gilbert had
learned from Lindahl’s attorney Glaser.
So Starkweather’s ordeal by prosecution
continues while Hallacy searches all of Michigan for an honest
prosecutor. It might take awhile. It shouldn’t be this hard.
Yesterday, Easter, Starkweather was
allowed to leave his parents’ home to go to church. Afterward, Matt
Starkweather’s father Tom said, “No family should be put through
anything like this. If the government has a case let’s go to trial
tomorrow!”
No trial date has yet been set since it turned out Special Prosecutor Fitz cheated and lied.
