Dallas, Texas — Clinton Broden of the Dallas based criminal defense firm Broden, Mickelsen, Helms & Snipes, LLP. announced that a hearing has been set on the City of McLennan’s motion to quash the subpoena he issued to Twin Peaks for its surveillance video of the events of May 17, 2015.
The hearing is set before District Judge Matt Johnson in the 54th District Court at 9:00 am on Tuesday, June 30, 2015. Presumably a hearing will also be held at the same time on Broden’s motion to sanction the City Attorney’s Office for filing the frivolous motion to quash in the first place.
Broden continued to express bewilderment that the City of Waco believes it has the authority to stop the production of a video that is owned by the Twin Peaks franchisee and which the franchisee is ready, able and willing to produce. “Everybody needs to understand that this video is the property of the Twin Peaks franchisee. It is not the property of the City of Waco, theWaco Police or McLennan county. It is private property,” said Broden.
Broden explained that the video is needed so that his client, Matt Clendennen, can establish his innocence at an upcoming probable cause hearing. “It is a complete denial of due process to allow the district attorney’s office to come into court and make allegations of what is on the video without producing the video,” said Broden.
“It would be like having a probable cause hearing in a bank robbery case and the prosecutor coming to court and saying ‘that’s your client on the video, just trust us’ and then not produce the video,” Broden continued.
“People need to understand that Matt Clendennen is innocent and for those who believe that all the bikers went to Twin Peaks that day anticipating violence, I remind people that Matt passed a polygraph wherein he truthfully answered ‘no’ to the question of whether he went to Twin Peaks onMay 17th anticipating any violence. According to polygraph standards from John Hopkins University, there is less than a one percent chance that Matt did not answer that question truthfully on the polygraph,” announced Broden.
The police in this case have denied the public transparency based on the claim that it is necessary to keep the video secret in order to conduct its investigation. Broden called this claim, “absurd in the United States” Broden first questioned how police could justify 177 arrests in the first place without having done a full investigation. “In this country we investigate first and arrest second,” said Broden More importantly, however, Broden questioned why police departments from around the country release videos despite ongoing investigations.
Broden pointed to the recent release by the Boston Police Department of a restaurant surveillance video of a police shooting in the Usaamah Rahim case. That video was made public within just a few days of the shooting. “Contrary to the story that the Waco Police Chief Stroman is trying to sell, this is not the usual procedure.
It is not the usual procedure for the police to hold multiple press conferences the day of an incident and announce several untruths during those conference and then refuse to release the contemporaneous recording of the event with a few days to a week,” explained Broden.
Broden also questioned why, in the current day and age, there are no cell phone videos of the incident from citizens and explained that he had been given information from at least one innocent bystander that the police rounded up private citizens’ cell phones to keep the videos suppressed. (link)