Monday, October 30, 2017

Waco Day 897

OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
Waco will never end. For the jurors in the first Biker Brawl trial, listening to the prosecution’s  slow motion attempt to manufacture a criminal case against Dallas Bandido Jake Carrizal day after day, week after week must be like drowning in a manure pond.
The trial, originally scheduled to begin October 9, will enter its fourth week tomorrow. This is only trial one of a possible 192. There are also about 100 civil complaints for false arrest waiting for the criminal cases to end. A handful of civil suits have been filed against the Twin Peaks restaurant. And then just over the horizon is the prospect of a RICO case titled United States v. Reyna et al. And then just a few months after that the dream of the promised land, a vision of McClennan County District Attorney Abelino Reyna in an orange jumpsuit accented with shackles and a belly chain, listening as a humorless judge reads him the plea colloquy. “And how far did you go in school, Mr. Reyna? Do you understand the charges against you? Do you understand that by making this plea you may be giving up certain of your rights” Like the right to see the stars at night, big and bright, for, say, eight or nine years.
If the prosecutors were actual human beings they would know they have lost. If the four grand inquisitors – Brody Burks, Amanda Dillon, Michael Jarrett and Abel Reyna – actually had evidence that Carrizal was guilty of some crime they would have mentioned it by now. Don’t you think? Wouldn’t you? They have not because they do not. Their only recourse seems to be to delay and delay and delay the inevitable contempt and scorn they are bringing on themselves.

Blood Soaked Photos

Just Friday, defense attorney Casie Gotro complained that she still hasn’t seen all the evidence in this overblown case. She insinuated that she may eventually move for a mistrial. Carrizal will probably be acquitted before it comes to that
This is a contextless prosecution. This jury is compelled to watch a drama written by idiots, full of blood soaked crime photos and baseless accusations glued together by half-baked conjecture and inference. The presentation of the ballistics evidence just started at the end of the third week. Maybe the defense will get its turn soon. But the prosecution just called its 45th witness. Its witness list has 450 names on it so this could take awhile
Prosecutors are deliberately misleading the jury in order to secure a conviction against a 35-year-old family man who is, at most, guilty of not trusting a system run by people like the prosecutors. This is not a trial. This is a political campaign. It is a political campaign because that is what these arrogant nitwits know how to win. None of them gives a damn about justice. They only care about winning.

Willie Horton

This prosecutorial team is comprised of what Paddy Chayesky called humanoids. They are not people who know the world from experience. They know the world at secondhand. They are the kind of very smart people who don’t get art or religion. That is why it is so easy for them to try to slander Carrizal’s character.
None of them even has the simple human capacity to feel ashamed. The low point this week may have come when prosecutors actually had the gall to show jurors images of all the dead including Jesus “Jesse” “Mohawk” Rodriguez. Then they showed the jury photos of Jacob Rhyne who was one of the two men who assassinated Rodriguez like he was a rabid possum. The jury was supposed to infer that somehow all the deaths were Jake Carrizal’s fault. Because he was there. Because he didn’t stay home that day. Because he knew the Cossacks were dangerous and he refused to be bullied by them. Because he subscribes to an old fashioned code of honor that forbids men to allow themselves to be bullied. That’s why the prosecutors wanted “to do” Carrizal first. He’s too big for his britches.
The idea in this case is to convince 12 jurors, not 10 or 11, but 12, that Christopher Jacob Carrizal is Willie Horton. Reyna and his running dogs are trying to convince the jury that Rhyne didn’t shoot Mohawk Rodriguez in the head. Carrizal did. It is an absurd notion and the only explanation for the prosecution’s case is that all of them are such egotistical provincials that they think they can convince anybody of anything.

Jasmin Caldwell

They can’t even convince a local television reporter named Jasmin Caldwell.
Prosecutors put crime scene technicians on the stand for days, and what they proved was that everybody in Texas carries a weapon and Waco has crime scene investigators just like all those big, uppity cities out there beyond the Brazos. You know, like Durango. Oh, and the technicians and operators and other important police persons found very many guns at the scene. So by the looney tunes logic of this whole wacky case, the jury should also infer that Jake Carrizal must be the biggest gun dealer in Central Texas.
“Witnesses painted a mental picture of the day for the jury,” Caldwell wrote Wednesday, “but little was discussed that appeared to actually relate to the defendant and his alleged relation to the evidence being presented.”
So now I’m back in Waco. Friday I pitched some people from The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Times Sunday Magazine and Rolling Stone. No go so far. Friday night a woman I know a little, not a lot, asked me why I was wasting my time on this.
I’m came back anyway. Here goes another three grand. Keep reading. I’m starting to get angry.