OFF THE WIRE
agingrebal.com
A federal trial jury in Santa Ana, California began deliberating the racketeering case United States versus Mongol Nation, An Unincorporated Association today about 1:15 p.m. Pacific Time.
The case title is clumsy because it is a confusing case that tries to make the last 20 years of the motorcycle outlaw vision of America dance on the head of a thumbtack. The witness list had everybody but Sonny Barger and Charlie Hunnam. ATF author-heroes William Queen and Jay Dobyns testified about Operation Ivan and Operation Black Biscuit. The four undercover agents from Operation Black Rain – Gregory “Russo” Giaioni, Paul “Painter” D’Angelo, Darrin “Dirty Dan” Kozlowski and John Hollywood Carr testified – or testi-Lied as defense attorney Joe Yanny put it.
A score of alleged Mongols victims and police told their stories.
The mother and sister of a Mongol named David Martinez, whose home was invaded by Swat at four in the morning a little more than four years ago testified. Pomona Police Department SWAT Officer Shaun Diamond did not testify because he died in the raid but his photo literally hovered over hours of the trial like a wraith.
Christopher “Stonee” Ablett who killed Hells Angel Mark “Papa” Guardado in a brief, ferocious fist, knife and gun fight in San Francisco a little more than a decade ago testified.
A Mongol who was stabbed four times and shot four times in the so-called Laughlin riot in April 2002, who won a soc-called “murder patch” because somebody tried to murder him, and who later signed and renouced a coerced plea deal testified.
Al “The Suit” Cavazos who was expelled from the Mongols in 2008 testified and he raged against ATF case agent John Ciccone who sat at the prosecutors’ table.
Mony Robles, a sixty-something Mongol whose motorcycle shop was blown up in 1977, testified. Robles referenced a bouquet of red and white flowers that was sent to a funeral home; the site of another bombing. And, he did not miss a beat when he was asked who he thought has sent the flowers. “The ATF,” Robles replied without pausing to think about it.
Jesse Ventura who was last a Mongol in about 1972 testified and when he did the trial briefly caught the nation’s attention. TMZ picked up the story of the trial that day.
Even I testified, as the defense expert, and I was then vilified by a couple of Assistant U.S. Attorneys for the rest of the trial for my “infatuation” with bad guys; the heartless way I had referred to Shaun Diamond as a “Swat goon,” and the “paranoia” I demonstrated in asserting that the undercover agents of Black Rain were up to their necks in the murder of a Mongol named Manuel Vincent “Hitman” Martin and that Christopher Michael Brunwin, one of the two prosecutors in this case, was up to his sophistical neck in it, too. My paranoia and my disdain for the ATF undercover agents exemplified “the paranoia of this subculture” and the general contempt for authority the Mongols displayed.
Really all of this that you have just read about, and that took a little more than five weeks to unfold, was just gun smoke and bang-bang.As one of the jurors enthusiastically nodded along with Brunwin’s rebuttal to the defense’s closing argument,as I waited for him to raise his hands in the air and shout “Amen,” I scribbled down a note that read, ”ultimately what this case comes down is what the jurors thought before they heard a word of testimony.”
It would be impossible for anyone who knows anything about who and what was on trial in this case and not feel deeply cynical.
Distinctiveness
The jury heard its instructions yesterday morning at nine. Prosecutor Steven R. Welk started his closing argument at 10:30. Yanny finally got his chance to argue his case at 3:45. He had to stop at five. He picked up again this morning at 8:25. Brunwin got to make his rebuttal at 11;25.
Both Welk and Yanny spent a lot of time talking about “distinctiveness.” It is the core legal issue in the case. Virtually no one understands it – except you in another minute or two.
Every RICO case must have a “RICO person” dn a “RICO Enterprise.” The RICO person is the named defendant or defentdants. The RICO enterprise is the criminal organization for which they commit their crimes – like say the Gambinos or the Yakuza. What the government managed to do with this case, over the last five years, is persuade the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is that the “Mongols Gang” is a Criminal Enterprise comprised of all fully patched members of the Mongols Motorcycle Club. But the named defendant, the RICO person is a theoretical construct, a turn of phrase, an imgainary, invented category called “Mongol Nation an unincorporated association” which is comprised of patched members of the club, prospects, hang arounds, wives, girlfriends, possibly adolescent children and something called “associates” which is distinct from hang arounds. Associates are anybody who a Mongol might know who commits a crime. An actual example used by the prosecution in the trial was a man visiting a Mongol’s house who fired on a Deputy when he invaded the house. Under this legal concept, a drug dealer who attends a Mongol’s Christmas party makes the Mongol guilty of drug dealing.
Not only is it a specious concept but it is impossible for anyone, including journalists and jurors to understand. Yesterday Welk devoted hours to the difference he sees between hand arounds and associates. Today Brunwin joked that the jurors should all write term papers on the slippery concept of RICO distinctiveness. Nobody laughed at Brunwin’s jest.
Black And White
So at the long end of the trial the lawyers were reduced to expressing what the jurors and the public might be able to understand.
Yanny quoted Lincoln, St. Thomas and the Bible. He showed the jury the Gadsden Flag. He used many clever quips and turns of phrase. He showed the jury all the drug evidence in the case and grumbled in his gravelly voice “”I’ve see more in a frat house in the course of a month.” He questioned every accusation and told the jury “If you can’t burn in hell for the sin you can’t be put in prison for the offense.
Yanny told the panel, “It’s time to send a message to the ATF that they should not treat citizens that way” “The government wants you to apply the concept of collective guilt.” And, “Racketeering violations are how you abuse people. That’s what it (RICO) has become.”
Us And Them
Welk and Brunwin stubbornly clung to their own realities. Both of them emphasized the “otherness” of motorcycle outlaws in general and the Mongols in particular. Welk told the jury that “normal people” can’t understand the Mongols. He compared to the Mongols to vermin, to “rattlesnakes” with “pea-sized brains” who mindlessly attack everything that stumbles into their way. The club is a “beehive of pernicious criminal activity.” The evidence in the trial was a “lengthy parade of cruelty…against innocent civilians.” Their “twisted honor code is an affront to civilized society.”
The government hid its strangely subjective rainbow of accusations behind a f black and white curtain. The real issue in this trial was whether the “Mongol Nation” and the “Mongols Motorcycle Club” are the same thing or two different things. The prosecution wanted the jury to think the trial was about whether drug dealing and murder are right and wrong. What the jurors will debate in their room is which color wings means you had sex with a corpse.
What Means Fair
It probably wasn’t a fair trial. Trials rarely are. Judging by the juror who was virtually cheering for the prosecution while it was still going on, the Mongols probably won’t win an acquittal. That’s the bad news.
The good news is even if they don’t win an acquittal “Mongol Nation” doesn’t seem likely to be convicted either.
The other good news is “convicted of what.” And the other, other good news is that no matter how the verdict goes, nothing will change. The government will start forfeiture proceedings against the Mongols patches if it wins. But it will take more than a jury in Orange County, California to cancel the First Amendment.
Now we wait.
