WacoTrib by Tommy Witherspoon 1/26/2019
After the annual holiday slowdown and monthslong delays while waiting for a changing of the guard in the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office, judges are poised to handle a number of high-profile criminal cases that have long been pending.
February is going to be a busy month in Judge Ralph Strother’s 19th State District Court, with a capital murder trial, a sexual assault trial of a former Baylor University football player and hearings involving 2015 Twin Peaks shootout defendants scheduled.
After Barry Johnson defeated two-term incumbent Abel Reyna in the March Republican primary to become the new district attorney, the wheels of justice slowed considerably, with judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys all willing to postpone cases to give Johnson a chance to review them and to decide how to proceed.
Johnson said he spent part of this week in conference with Tom Needham, his executive assistant; Nelson Barnes, his first assistant; and prosecutors Hilary LaBorde and Robert Moody poring over voluminous Twin Peaks case files.
Johnson has asked Strother and 54th State District Judge Matt Johnson to give him until the first of April to get a grip on the Twin Peaks cases and to formulate a plan about how to proceed.
Reyna dismissed all but 27 of the original 155 indicted cases against the bikers before he left office in December. Three of the cases are being handled by special prosecutors from Houston, who dismissed one of the cases assigned to them because one said there was no probable cause for the May 2015 arrest.
A status hearing with the special prosecutors and attorneys for bikers William Aikin, Ray Nelson and Billy McCree is set for Feb. 8 in Strother’s court. Judge Johnson has 16 Twin Peaks cases pending in his court, while the others are in Strother’s court.
More:
https://www.wacotrib.com/news/courts_and_trials/courts-gear-up-for-high-profile-waco-cases-in-new/article_bc31478c-52b7-5bda-8880-2aa4af58f5ea.html
