But the response by prosecutors was widely criticized as brazen overreach: the arrests of 177 people, nearly everyone who had been at the scene that day. Serious criminal charges were later filed against almost all of them, and many were jailed on $1 million bond.
The end result came this week: None of those 177 people, or anyone else, will be held accountable for the biggest motorcycle-gang shootout in U.S. history. The case is ending after almost four years without a single conviction.
The last 24 pending indictments, involving lesser charges than the defendants initially faced, are being dismissed, the McLennan County district attorney, Barry Johnson, said Tuesday.
Johnson, recently elected to the post, cited what he described as a real possibility that conviction on even those lesser charges would be overturned on appeal. He also said that statutes of limitations made it impossible to pursue charges against anyone else.
And he expressed frustration with the course of the case, saying that there could have been real accountability for the shootout if his predecessor, Abel Reyna, had done a better job. But he said Reyna had failed to focus on the people most responsible for the carnage and bring them to trial with charges tailored to fit their individual culpability.
Johnson said Reyna should have used the available time and resources “to charge only those offenses where the admissible evidence would support a verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” And he added, “In my opinion, had this action been taken in a timely manner, it would have, and should have, resulted in numerous convictions and prison sentences.”
Only one defendant was tried: Jacob Carrizal, the president of the Bandidos chapter in Dallas. The case was declared a mistrial in 2017 after a majority of jurors voted to acquit him.
Johnson defeated Reyna in a Republican primary last year after sharply criticizing Reyna for the conduct of the shootout prosecution.
In a statement to the local newspaper — which had described the case as “a four-year prosecutorial fiasco” — Reyna suggested that his successor wasn’t being honest.
“I absolutely disagree with the overall result, as well as several statements and accusations within Mr. Johnson’s press release,” Reyna said. “However, it is solely his decision on how to proceed with any case in the district attorney’s office. I respect the fact that the voters of McLennan County chose Mr. Johnson to make these types of decisions.”
Another top prosecutor in Waco, Tom Needham, said that proving who, precisely, was culpable was very difficult because the shootout had been “a battlefield situation.”
“There were dozens of guns and hundreds of weapons collected after a five-minute brawl,” Needham said, according to the Austin American-Statesman. “With the video evidence and the forensic evidence that’s available, it’s simply not possible to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt who fired the shots that killed people.”
The Houston Chronicle reported that tests later indicated that four of the people who died that day were actually shot with weapons fired by Waco police officers, not by motorcycle gang members.
Johnny Holmes, the famously tough prosecutor and longtime district attorney in Houston, told the newspaper last year that the initial dragnet of arrests appeared to be an overreach, given how many of the cases were later dismissed.
“If you can prove that 177 people committed crimes, you don’t dismiss them because of the numbers,” Holmes said. “Or at least, I wouldn’t. The truth is, they probably didn’t commit a crime.”
While the criminal case is now over, the legal battle is not.
McLennan County, the City of Waco, Reyna and others are defendants in lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court by more than 100 bikers, who say that their civil rights were violated because they were arrested without probable cause. A judge in Waco ruled in November that the lawsuits could proceed.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.