JP Peterson removed from Hewitt biker’s case

A local justice of the peace was removed Thursday from an examining trial in the case of a Hewitt biker accused of engaging in organized crime in relation to the shootout at Twin Peaks restaurant.

Joe Carroll, senior judge of the 27th Judicial District Court, granted a motion to recuse Justice of the Peace W.H. “Pete” Peterson from the case involving Matthew Clendennen after Clendennen’s attorney, Clinton Broden, filed a complaint against Peterson

...

Broden’s complaint, filed June 2 with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, alleges Peterson violated several judicial ethical canons when he set the bonds for the jailed bikers. Broden has said his complaint is based on comments Peterson made to the Tribune-Herald after the shooting.

“I think it is important to send a message,” Peterson said at the time. “We had nine people killed in our community. These people just came in, and most of them were from out of town. Very few of them were from in town.”

Broden’s complaint alleges Peterson’s “public comments would cause persons to believe that they could not get a fair examining trial before Peterson.”

In the complaint, he alleges it is unlawful to set bonds to “send a message” and that Peterson’s quotes “indicate that he sets bonds out of bias against people who visit Waco.”

A judge who is wishing to "send a message" by placing an inordinately high dollar bail on a large group of individuals who were swept up is overstepping their bounds. At least to my mind.

And also to the mind of the senior judge of the 27th Judicial District Court, otherwise the motion would have been dismissed.

Source

Not to mention that Justice of the Peace W.H. “Pete” Peterson is the same judge mentioned in the following document, originally linked in this post by landman650:

Google Drive link

The "unarrest" of the five mentioned individuals is still something I am scratching my head over, especially considering the timeline of events.

Broden is the attorney who received the email about the Don Carlo's video in which at the 42:37 mark a man in an orange shirt can be seen placing an item on the ground (which appears to be a pistol) and a while later, at ~120:29 an evidence marker is placed near the item dropped.

Video as follows:



How much more will come out about this case and in how bad a light will each new revelation place the authorities in?

What says ATS?

I don't have much to say about the JoP aspect, but I had asked yesterday if anybody "important" had seen the video of the guy in the orange shirt putting something on the ground and then an evidence tag being placed on it.

I see now that somebody has.

And that's fantastic. I hope Broden rides that horse all day long.

a reply to: Shamrock6

If the judge was removed because the superior judge believed he was in the wrong, wouldn't this throw ALL of the cases into a suspect light?

As in, if this somehow wrong behavior was upheld as not being acceptable, would that not provide grounds for dismissal of all cases?

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

In theory I would think so but that's up to the attorneys to file a motion for. Or the DA to drop the charges.