Defense attorneys say they were blindsided by new evidence in ‘Stop Cop City' RICO case
The charges stem from the Stop Cop City protests and the violence surrounding them.
Prosecutors announced on Wednesday that after two years, they'd found new evidence they wanted to introduce.
Defense attorneys thought that was very late in this process.
Prosecutors said law enforcement gave them new evidence in the case, and they tried to get it to the defense attorneys, more than 30 of them, as quickly as possible.
'For the first time ever, the state revealed that there's more evidence in this case. Fifty-seven gigabytes, actually,' defense attorney Xavier De Janon told the court.
That's an issue because Fulton County Judge Kevin Farmer severed all 61 cases and announced he'll start trying them in groups of five.
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The first in the series of trials could start as soon as June.
All 61 defendants and their lawyers crowded into courtroom 1D on Wednesday for what's called a status update.
They were given a May 30 deadline to file all their motions so the trial could finally begin.
Defendant Marlon Kautz insists the trial is politically motivated.
'As long as 61 people are facing decades in prison on RICO charges simply for being associated with a political movement, protest everywhere is chilled,' Kautz told Channel 2's Richard Elliot.
De Janon couldn't stress how complicated a RICO case with 61 defendants will be.
'It's no secret with all that, this case is extremely complex. 61 co-defendants, multiple allegations over multiple years,' De Janon said.
The state attorney general's office is trying this case.
Elliot reached out to that office for comment on this story, but so far, has not heard back from them.
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Buzz Feed
7 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
29 Massive Family Secrets People Uncovered
Recently, we wrote about family secrets people discovered, and members of the BuzzFeed Community had some of their own secrets to share. Here's what they had to get off their chests.* "That the 'holiday' I had at my aunt's house for a month, where my mum would call me a lot of days crying, was actually me being kidnapped and taken to a secluded town in the middle of nowhere (in rural Australia where it was four hours to the closest town). My mum didn't want to call the police at first because she was close to her sister and believed she was being manipulated by another family member (who had successfully kidnapped my brother many years ago). But she eventually called the police, and I was brought back. I had a feeling something was off with the way my mum would talk on the phone ... but she didn't want to scare me at the time. I didn't find out for sure until a few years later." "I was told my father was arrested and sent to prison for 15 years for being a part of a boiler room fraud scheme in the late '80s and that he was charged under RICO for communications fraud and theft on A LOT of counts. I went to visit him a few times, and he would send cards on holidays and my birthday. ... I remember him using a cane the first time I saw him in prison, and he said he 'got hurt.' My 4-year-old self thought this made sense. After a year or so, he stopped writing, and I stopped visiting." "My aunt Rosa was the only sister not living in the US. She had a child my mom's age but no husband and was never referred to as widowed. I always suspected something dark kept her in Mexico because the subject would get changed when someone brought it up. Back in 2009, I was visiting her and asked her why she'd never moved here. Turns out she did in the '50s, but her husband was an abusive drunk. He hit her son (my cousin) when he was three and broke his nose. That was the final straw. My aunt waited for him to go to sleep, packed her bags, loaded her car, cut his throat, and ran back to Mexico." "For me, it was the lawsuit against my grandpa for groping my cousin. She was 15. I was 8. My parents left me alone with him after this, even though my cousin swears it happened. I didn't know the truth till I found my estranged cousin when I was 18, and my parents had the audacity to tell me that she was toxic." "I only discovered a few years ago that the commune my parents were in in the 1970s was more like a sex cult than a commune. There was one leader, and everyone gave all their money to him; he set all the rules and made very arbitrary decisions. Like making my parents marry even though, as my mom said (which sort of traumatized 14-year-old me), 'we weren't even sleeping together that week!' Some seriously weird shit went down. It wasn't a commune; it was a cult. I asked my mom bluntly about it a few years ago, and she agreed." "My great-grandmother and her family were sex workers. Her mother and aunt ran a 'boarding house' for 'professional women' and the men they would 'entertain.' They also were part of a team smuggling liquor across the border into the US during prohibition. I had guessed at some point that the 'boarding house' was actually a brothel, which was confirmed to me once I was older." "My mum passed away never knowing that it was my sibling who'd turned her in to local authorities after a decade on the run. She ended up only serving nine months of a 22-year sentence because she'd been living a quiet life during that time. This meant we could leave an abusive household to move in with her once she was out. Living with her was only mildly better in the end, but my sibling's actions might have saved our lives. I found out after I was married and moved out of state. I'd thought it was suspicious [that she was arrested] so soon after we'd discovered where she was living, but outright denial meant I gave up wondering as a teen." "I grew up with a single mother and no contact with relatives. I was told nothing about why it was only my brother, myself, and whatever random man my mother was involved with at the time. We moved constantly, and she seemed to have no friends either. If I asked any questions about why we didn't have relatives or why we were moving again, I would get frozen out, and she would not speak to me or look at me for months at a time, so I learned to stop asking. When I moved out at 16, I started trying to look for anything in libraries that might help me find out what the real story was about any family I might have." "My siblings and I could never figure out when we'd get together with my mom's family why my one aunt was always resentful about my other aunt who had a child out of wedlock. After about fifty years, we finally found out with the passing of my mom. My resentful aunt had a child and was forced to give it up. The reason she had to give up the baby was because she became pregnant by my father — he, my mom, grandparents, and aunt kept it all secret. My brother and I were in between the other baby. Sadly, we connected with the brother and were in the process of meeting when he died of a heart attack. It is so weird that my mom forgave everyone and acted like nothing was ever wrong. I feel so sorry for my mom, who has lived with this for so long. Even on her deathbed, she kept the secret." "My sister has a different dad. That one just took thinking twice about some math that they'd been normalizing to us since we were tiny. We just didn't think about it! Yeah, she's the only brunette in a family of blondes, but that's my sister! If anyone asks, my mom fell pregnant at 16, a few months before meeting my 23-year-old father. We're unsure if our dad knew, but he's not the kind of magnanimous benefactor who would keep a kid that's not his. I respect my mother's decision because that kept my sister glued to our side during custody battles, the loss of our mom, secured a childhood for my sister under heinous circumstances." "I didn't know my dad for close to 40 years. Folks would tell me very little about him, and if I asked for any more details, I was always told to 'let sleeping dogs lie.' At one point, I even asked if he knew where we lived, and they said if he did know, 'we'd move again.' After my grandmother died, I got more information and was able to find my dad, except he had died 15 years before. His family was certainly shocked to learn about me. My dad's family told me his parents would have loved me, especially my Abuelo, with whom I share a birthday ... I've never forgiven my mom for this." "I had a great uncle on my mom's side who I just loved. He and his wife (they had no children) lived in the US (my family is Canadian), but they'd come to visit often. He'd spend most of their visits playing with me, telling me stories of where he'd traveled and bedtime stories from different countries from memory. My great-uncle died suddenly when I was eight. I was always told it was a heart attack. His wife, who was European, moved back to Europe but kept in touch with my grandparents. Fast forward a couple of decades, and my mom inherited my great-uncle's personal papers from her father (my great-uncle's brother). It turns out my great-uncle joined US Intelligence in the 1940s and was working for the CIA on an 'assignment' when he died. No idea if his wife knew." "I found out that my great-grandmother was a mail-order bride. Growing up, when my dad would tell me stories about her, he just said that she was 'essentially a mail-order bride.' I took that to mean that maybe she found a guy through a pen pal or something. Nope! I found out later she went through a company that connected mail-order brides to single men. Unfortunately, both her husbands were assholes. It sounded really ugly." "My mother wasn't my grandfather's child. She didn't find out until I shared my 23andMe results with her. If she weren't an affair baby, I'd have been about 1/4 Italian. Instead, I'm 1/4 Latvian and absolutely 0% Italian. Grandma just so happened to be 'very good friends' with a Latvian man who had been one of her patients. What really sucked was when my mom told one of my aunts, she found out that not only did everyone else know, but they'd agreed not to tell my mother for going on 60 years now." "I was in a cult. I didn't know the word for it [at the time], but I would constantly sit in church and just wonder if it was all made up by someone who enjoyed controlling other people. After some research (that I was told never to do!), my suspicions were confirmed." My grandmother started getting dementia about 10 years ago, [and we found out that] neither of my mother's siblings are my grandfather's children. She had a 15-year affair, and my 'oops baby' mother is his only legitimate child. Granny also offed that same grandfather. There's no way to prove it, though, and at this point, it was over 20 years ago. He fell out of bed and broke his hip, and instead of calling for help, she unplugged all the phones and left him on the floor for three days. She 'found' him when the neighbor came by to take him fishing or something, but by that point, he was delirious and half unconscious. He died a couple of days later from a massive stroke." "My now-dead father-in-law had multiple affairs during his marriage to my mother-in-law. It was a known family secret that all the men had second and even third families. My husband said his dad never had a second family, but there are photos of 'extended cousins' who look eerily like my husband and his brothers." "My grandmother (dad's mother) lied to my dad and his sister for decades about who their real fathers were. They believed their father had died when my dad was in his twenties and my aunt was in her teens — until 23andMe tests came back and showed they were only HALF siblings. My dad was rightfully angry and confronted my grandmother about it. It turns out the man she was married to was sterile, and her doctor (back in the '50s and '60s) told her if she wanted kids, she'd need to 'seek other options.' So she did — with her then-boss and another random man. She refuses to apologize to my dad and aunt for lying to them, even after her husband's death ages ago." "My cousin who was super ill actually had a sickness that was preventable with medicine. ... [He] died because the woman my uncle married was a religious nut. ... [This was] confirmed later when I was an adult. I remember getting told off as a kid because I asked, 'Isn't there medicine for what he has?'" "My dad told me this full story on a camping trip recently. ... Basically, when my grandma and grandpa were still married and had my dad's older sister, my grandpa was very, very religious, but my grandma wasn't as invested. I'm not sure whether it was a splinter group of their church or an entirely different thing, but my grandpa eventually joined this hyper-religious, cult-like group (my dad just referred to it as a flat-out cult), which was led by a woman about the same age as my grandma and grandpa. My grandma knew this group was sketchy af, but this was the early '70s, so she felt like she had to go along with my grandpa's devotion to the group. The group was meeting one night at my grandma and grandpa's house, and somehow, possibly over the course of just that night, or maybe it had been ongoing, the leader convinced my grandpa to kill, or at least attack, my grandma, who at that time was pregnant with my dad." "When I was a kid, my parents were eager to send me upstairs to bed because they were hiding lots of things they didn't want me and others to know about. Mom drank too much. Dad was in the closet and in a long-term relationship with the man who lived in our house with us — and Dad's partner actually owned the house!" "My uncle was the local drug dealer. ... When I hit 14, he mentioned to me at a family event that if I ever wanted to experiment, I just had to talk to him. He would give me reasonable access. If he found out that I was using other stuff, he'd tell my parents. Never paid for drugs all through high school, and when he came to pick me up in Year 9 one time, I got so many shocked looks." "That my aunt did not die of an asthma attack in her sleep but took her own life. She had been very depressed. As an adult, they admitted she purposely overdosed. As a child with asthma, I wish they had just told me the truth because before I started to suspect it was a lie, I was terrified that I was going to die too." "I grew up in a small, rural community where everyone knew each other, especially if they had kids the same age. My parents were close friends with all of my friends' parents and would spend nights over at their houses and stuff. It turns out they were all doing drugs and swinging." "One of my aunts had a bad relationship with my grandpa. Grandpa was an asshole, so it wasn't hard to believe, but she never came around family events, and it was just odd. ... It turns out that my aunt was in charge of watching her infant sister when she was 10-11 years old; the infant sister died on 'her watch,' and grandpa blamed her for it. I first heard this story when I was 18, about a year after Grandpa died. I knew something fucked up had happened, but I didn't think it was that bad." "My dad died of a heart attack. His heart was bad, but he was also a functional cocaine user. ... He made good money, provided for his family, and had nice cars — it was somewhat unexpected. My sister saw on his death certificate and showed me at about 28 years old that cocaine was in his system when he died, and they found the baggie in the bathroom. His artery was already blocked 95%, and he'd had chest pains those few days and set an appointment for Monday with doctors. The story was he was peeing in the bathroom and took a puff of his cigarette, and then that blocked his heart to 100%, so I guess I somehow figured plaque dislodged from one place in the artery to that final 95% place with the puff of that cigarette." "That my dad is not my bio dad, and my mom was an unwed teen mom for the first year of my life. Before I get into it, my mom did what she had to do to get out of a tough situation, and I love my dad. He has never treated me differently than my siblings and told me after all this came out that I am his daughter regardless." "My grandmother knew her second husband was sexually assaulting my mother as a child and did nothing until it came out to the rest of the world, too. Mom confirmed she told my grandma after the first or second time it happened, at seven years old. And this part hasn't been confirmed, but I believe there's enough evidence with how my grandmother talks about him that she never stopped loving him and only divorced him because it's what was expected of her. I don't talk to her anymore." And finally..."[I found out] that two of my dad's cousins had a kid [together]. No shit."
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Leader of notorious Mass. gang sentenced to prison following decade of violence
A 26-year-old former leader of a notorious Massachusetts gang known for a decade of bloodshed was sentenced to prison Wednesday. Aaron Diaz Liranzo, also known as 'Sosa,' was sentenced by U.S. Senior District Court Nathaniel M. Gorton to 14 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Diaz Liranzo was arrested and charged in February when authorities said he was the leader of the Lynn Chapter of the Trinitarios gang. He pleaded guilty to RICO conspiracy, or conspiring to participate in criminal operations in a pattern of illegal activity, in March. He was one of at least 22 active gang members who were charged with state or federal crimes earlier this year. He was the sixth gang member charged to plead guilty. The charges stem from a slew of organized criminal activities in Massachusetts over the past decade, including the murders of six people and the attempted killings of 11 others. In February, officials called the indictments a 'significant blow' to the criminal enterprise. Diaz Liranzo was the leader of the Lynn Chapter from at least 2021 until 2025, called 'the Primera' or 'Number One,' according to the U.S. District Attorney's Office. The 26-year-old admitted to participating in a shooting outside of a Lynn nightclub in March 2019, where he shot at three people inside a car, the office said. Two people were severely injured, though both survived. The shooting was planned to target rival gang members and the victims were lured there by another gang member who 'posed as a woman who needed a ride,' the district attorney's office said. Massachusetts Trinitarios have committed multiple homicides in Essex County over the past decade and are believed to be responsible for numerous attempted murders, shootings, kidnappings and robberies, the district attorney's office said. More News Mass. beach closures: Here are the beaches closed on Thursday, July 17 GoFundMe campaigns set up for family of Fall River man killed in police shooting Social Security implementing big change this fall. Here's how benefits will be affected Springfield weekend homicide victim identified as 35-year-old resident Fall River funeral home offers free services for Gabriel House fire victims Read the original article on MassLive.
UPI
4 days ago
- UPI
Two MS-13 members sentenced for 2010 murder in Massachusetts
Two 31-year-old members of the MS-13 gang were sentenced in prison for their roles in the murder of a man under the on-ramp to Route 1 in Chelsea in December 2010. Photo by Department of Justice July 16 (UPI) -- Two 31-year-old members of the MS-13 gang were sentenced in Boston to decades in prison for their roles in a murder in 2010 that was solved 14 years later. On Tuesday, Senior District Judge William Young sentenced the La Mara Salvatrucha members: Jose Vasquez, also known as Littler Crazy, to 25 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release; and William Pineda Portillo, also known as Humlde, to 16 years to be followed by three years of supervision. Vasquez was already serving a 212-month sentence for a conviction in May 2018 for conspiracy to participate in Racketeer Influence and Corruption Organization, or RICO. In all, his prison sentence is 37 years. Portillo is a Salvadoran national unlawfully living in Everett, Mass., subject to deportation after he completes his sentence. In May 2023, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to participate in RICO conspiracy. The two men were indicted by a federal grand jury in September. Vasquez and Pineda Portillo pleaded guilty this May to one count of violent crime in aid of racketeering. "What these men allegedly did to their victims was particularly heinous -- so much so that, over a decade later, the circumstances still stand out," Special Agent in Charge Jodi Cohen of the Boston FBI field office said when announcing this and another murder-connected indictment. Amaya Paredes allegedly murdered a 27-year-old in July 2020 in Dartmouth, Mass. Vasquez and Pineda Portillo conspired with others to kill a 28-year-old man on Dec. 18, 2010, in Chelsea near Boston. That evening, law enforcement responded to a 911 call near the Route 1 on-ramp. The unnamed victim was found alive with about 10 stab wounds to the chest and back, along with head injuries. He was taken to a hospital where he died. A re-examination of evidence years later from the scene identified members of the gang, including Vasquez, as committing the murder, prosecutors said. The two believed the victim belonged to a rival gang, prosecutors said. On the day of the murder, Pineda Portillo picked up the victim, Vasquez and other MS-13 members with a vehicle registered to his father. In a secluded area, one gang member struck the victim in the head with a rock as another gang member stabbed him with a machete. During the attack, Vasquez used a knife to stab him. His palm print was identified on the handle of a silver kitchen knife found at the murder scene. Also, the victim's blood was found on the knife. In an undercover recording obtained six weeks after the murder, an MS-13 member acknowledged his role in the murder and other members disciplined him for leaving Massachusetts without their permission. Pineda Portill had fled to El Salvador. He returned to the United States in April 2015, where he arranged to sell a firearm with eight rounds of ammunition. Federal prosecutors said on or around June 1, he conspired to kill an MS-13 member he incorrectly thought had been arrested and was operating with law enforcement. "I want that son of a bitch killed, man. ... You will see, homebody," he said in a recording by law enforcement. "We are going to do a complete thing to that son of a bitch, dude." He was indicted in 2017 and then deported to El Salvador. On May 10, 2022, he was arrested as he tried to return to the United States again from Mexico to Texas. After being arrested at the border, he admitted he was a member of MS-13, according to court documents. A fingerprint analysis determined there was an arrest warrant. He was taken to Massachusetts, where he remained in custody. MS-13 members are required to commit violence, specifically against rival gang members, and kill informants, according to the Department of Justice. This operation is part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces Strike Force Initiative.
