Mad Marc’s Case In Twin Peaks Comedy Of Errors

Marcus Pilkington, shot at Twin Peaks, was the last to get out of jail, last to shake the million dollar bond, and he may be first to flip the bird at the silliest gangster prosecution on record – ever – anywhere!

Six Shooter – When the high power barristers hit the 54th Criminal District Court bright and early Friday morning, July 27, they’ll be carrying a torch Waco lawyer Robert Callahan lit while looking law in the black and white statutes.

Curse the glare!

Callahan is the ex-prosector who got his walking papers on January 1, 2011, Abel “Mighty Mouse” Reyna’s first day as the Elected Criminal District Attorney of McLennan County.

Reyna had no place for Callahan, and Callahan was a prime mover in the high tide that washed Reyna out to sea on election day, 2016, in a 60-40 split when home town trouble shooter Barry Johnson beat the socks off the Mouse in a very uneven match of wits, will and the wherewithal to navigate the rocks and shoals of the Texas Constitution amid allegations of big bricks of cocaine missing from the evidence locker, dismissal of cases for political contributors, and a laundry list of ethics violations including aggravated perjury from the witness stand at a disqualification hearing aimed at his ouster as prosecutor.

On that day in history, Mouse was taken to task for being the author of the affidavit he then commanded a Waco police detective to sign – when the man had no personal knowledge of what the hell had happened at the crime scene. Manuel Chavez testified he had been in a distant part of the city, investigating a case of rape.

He said, “I never saw him (Reyna) that night,” when F. Clinton Broden asked if it was true that the DA had urged him to familiarize himself with the facts of the Twin Peaks investigation before signing the complaint that he – Reyna – drafted with the help of Asst. DA Mark Parker and lead prosecutor Michael Jarrett.

Recalled to the witness stand, Reyna repeated his earlier falsehood with an elaborate answer about how he taken pains to make sure Chavez was thoroughly briefed on the allegations he was asked to swear to on his oath, as his personal knowledge.

And though he was not disqualified in the hearing of August 8, 2016, he recused himself numerous times to keep from being called as a witness regarding an FBI probe of his alleged off color dealings.

It helps to know your stuff when you carry out a full frontal assault on our Constitution.

And Houston lawyers Paul Looney and Mark Thiessen don’t falter when they hand out the credit for their strategy in this – ah – shall we say – embarrassing display of a lack of legal savvy.

Quite simply, said Mr. Callahan, the indictments for rioting returned by a Grand Jury as a superseding count to the original complaint of two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity  that took a back seat to what the lawyers laughingly called the “lesser-included” offenses of murder and aggravated assault, are as useless as Sam Goldwyn’s famous verbal agreement.

They aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

All 155 original indictments have been dismissed except the remaining 25, who have been charged with riot, murder and riot, tampering with physical evidence, and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon.

Problem.

Callahan can’t help but look like a kitty cat with cream on his whiskers when he points it out to the general public – the body politic, the hoi polloi, WE THE PEOPLE.

“The problem with the re-indictments is that the DA’s office re-indicted filed cases without dismissing the original indictment.

“The correct method of filing the riot charge, for instance, would have been to indict it as a new case with a new cause number.”

The deal is, the Code of Criminal Procedure, a Title of the Constitution of the State of Texas, does not allow Grand Jurors to return superseding indictments tacked onto previous charges.

It’s just not done that way, said Mr. Callahan. Why? Because it is written that if you think up more offenses and present them to the Grand Jury, you must file new cases under new cause numbers.

There is no such thing as a superseding indictment – at least, not in the Texas Criminal District Courts – because anything else, such as a superseding indictment from Alice and her pals in Wonderland – is a bad dream from an opium pipe, a mushroom pie, or a crystalline delusion hoovered up from the marching powder produced in a jungle lab.

Tut tut.

“We are heavily indebted to Robert Callahan, a prominent Waco criminal attorney who came up with the idea and provided me with initial research,” said Pilkington’s lead counsel, Paul Looney.

“We are of the opinion that the second indictment was unlawfully obtained and cannot now be lawfully obtained,” he fairly trumpeted in a legal alarum filed way back in early June.

“Just when it was beginning to look like the McLennan County District Attorney’s office had discarded the  ‘Book of Waco’ and chosen to follow the Code of Criminal Procedure, we found that they are still making their own rules and have now made an inexcusable blunder.”

What blunder would that be?

Said Callahan, “They could have had the two charges running parallel. Now, instead, the second indictment is of no legal import at all and is voidable, which means the riot statute of limitations has run on all the new indictments and they are stuck with the ‘engaging’ charges they initially used.”

To read Marcus Pilkington’s Motion to Quash the superseding indictment one need only click here. 

Only one such case received the scrutiny of a jury.

Eleven of the twelve chosen to judge Dallas Bandido Jake Carrizal for that offense finally told Judge Matt Johnson they didn’t need to hear any more evidence. As far as they were concerned, during five weeks of droning testimony of “gang experts” who talked about conditions in California and Colorado, and movies and television shows about “outlaw motorcycle gangs,” the State had failed to present any evidence that Mr. Carrizal engaged in anything other than self defense when he and a dozen guys headed for a political meeting rode into a double ambush from members of the Cossacks Motorcycle Club and a hail of bullets from the assault rifles of  Waco Police and Department of Public Safety agents – 14 in all firing military weapons equipped with suppressors and sophisticated holographic sights.

Three Waco cops fired the rounds that killed four of the nine who lost their lives in the “melee,” according to an evidence technician from the Southwest Institute of Forensic Sciences; the remaining eleven rifles were never tested, but surely the thousands of rounds fired must have found their mark in some of the 23 hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

Though ballistics tests were performed on firearms seized from those arrested, no evidence or testimony was presented.

That pesky Code of Criminal Procedure reared its ugly head – once again.

When a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives agent took the witness stand during the Carrizal trial, he gave elaborate testimony as to his bona fides as an expert witness.

Under cross examination by defense counsel Casie Gotro, yet another defense counsel who hails from the Domed City, the agent finally admitted he would be testifying about ballistics reports prepared by Waco Police evidence technicians.

He sat there and repeatedly answered that the reports were prepared by “experts,” and Ms. Gotro would repeat her question, as to just who did those tests, from what law enforcement agency?

Finally, the old boy gave up the ghost and said, “Waco Police Department.”

“Your honor, I would object as to hearsay testimony by this witness,” she declared.

Judge Matt Johnson reacted just as quickly.

“Sustained. Call your next witness,” he told the prosecution.

There is something written – that is, carved in granite – about how a witness offering testimony must have personal knowledge of the subject matter about which he is offering as his personal testimony.

If you answer questions form a prosecutor about technical reports prepared by another person from another agency, you are engaging in hearsay testimony, and that is not allowed by – you guessed it – the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.

Mighty Mouse and Michael Jarrett both looked very, very disappointed as they took the massive mounds of printed material they had laid on the evidence table before the bench and stuffed them into the plastic tote bins stacked chin high that they had only minutes previously two-wheeled in from the DA’s office.

We The People could only remark in silence as to the way events just became curiouser and curiouser – as time goes by.

Paul Looney invited all who suffered a re-indictment that was illegally and unconstitutionally obtained to take advantage of the truth uncovered by Robert Callahan’s legal scholarship.

They are listed below.

So mote it be.

• The Legendary

Robert Callahan, barrister, of Callahan & King, Attorneys

Twin Peaks case re-indicted are: