Latest McLennan DA screwup par for Waco biker case

Even in a large-scale episode like the Waco biker shootout in May, one would think authorities ought to be able to count the number of dead. Regardless, it turned out the 10th victim listed in the Twin Peaks biker shootout indictments didn't exist and was just a case of the same sort of sloppy lawyering which led the DA to charge dozens of people with the same, trumped up offenses. (Four others were shot by police with rifles from a distance.) Reported the Houston Chronicle:

Everyone has been charged with the same crime - which carries a penalty of 15 years to life in prison - even though police surveillance videos clearly show most of the bikers running from the violence and ballistics tests on guns and bullet fragments have not yet been completed.

"It is a reflection of how sloppy this case has been handled from the beginning," Dallas lawyer Clint Broden said.

"He was really able to bamboozle the grand jury into indicting people for crimes that he acknowledges they didn't commit," said Broden, who added that it was an example of the adage that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich if he chooses to do so.

Amanda Peters, a former prosecutor who is now a professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, had little sympathy for Reyna.

"This office has already come under a lot of criticism," Peters said. "And you would think that they wouldn't want to do anything to fuel more criticism."

Peters said that from a legal standpoint, prosecutors can easily go back and amend the indictment, but that they have made yet another embarrassing public gaffe.

"This is one more indication this case isn't being handled as cleanly as it could," she said. "Most defense attorneys and prosecutors (in Texas) are scratching their heads," she said. "People I talk to are like, yeah, that is a mess."

The McLennan County District Attorney's Office has tried to do too much too quickly, she said.

"In every one of these mass-arrest situations, it always ends up a disaster," she said. "There are lawsuits filed; settlements; somebody gets kicked out of office or fired - not to mention the mockery it makes of the justice system."

Abel Reyna and the rest of the McLennan County justice system are in way over their heads and poised embarrass the entire state if they don't get a clue and begin to limit criminal prosecutions to people who actually engaged in criminal behavior.