A federal choose has denied a request for a brand new trial by the infamous Mongols Bike Membership regardless of claims by the outlaw group that its former president was a secret authorities informant who labored in opposition to them throughout their ongoing authorized battle with the federal government.
A number of years after a jury deemed the Mongols a legal group, the membership’s attorneys have in latest months alleged that former Mongols president David Santillan was a authorities “rat” who was working with now-retired ATF Agent John Ciccone within the midst of a 2018 trial at a Santa Ana courthouse.
Santillan and Ciccone have denied the membership’s allegations, and representatives for legislation enforcement businesses concerned in investigating the Mongols have testified that there is no such thing as a report of the previous membership president serving as a confidential informant. U.S. District Decide David Carter final week dominated in opposition to the Mongols request for a brand new trial, in line with the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace.
Key to the Mongols new trial request was a surreptitiously recorded telephone name between an apparently drunken Santillan and his spouse, with whom he was estranged on the time. In that decision — which the spouse later leaked to different Mongols members — Santillan responded to her need to depart the bike membership world by saying “John” was retiring “and he can’t shield me, he advised me, so we've to have an exit technique.”
Mongols’ attorneys additionally cited reviews that Santillan had been seen “assembly” with Ciccone at a Starbucks a half-block from the federal courthouse mid-trial, and alleged that the previous membership president had a “get-out-of-jail cross” from the then-ATF agent.
Santillan denied working in opposition to the membership on behalf of the federal government, explaining in latest testimony that his feedback through the recorded telephone name adopted a dialog with Ciccone through which the soon-to-retire agent recommended Santillan take the chance to stroll away from the membership because the subsequent agent assigned to the case is probably not as “good.”
Santillan testified that Ciccone had been “honest” to the membership, in his phrases not placing any “bull(expletive) instances on us.” He described the “assembly” between him and Ciccone on the Starbucks as an opportunity encounter, and denied colluding with the federal government through the trial or receiving preferential therapy from legislation enforcement.
Ciccone testified that his solely conversations with Santillan occurred in entrance of different membership members at public occasions the place investigators needed the bike riders to know that legislation enforcement was watching. Throughout latest testimony, Santillan’s spouse — who apparently has reconciled with him — walked again her earlier claims to different membership members that Santillan was an informant.
Attorneys representing the membership additionally questioned whether or not Santillan was concerned in law-enforcement investigations into the highly effective, prison-based Mexican Mafia.
An lawyer with ties to the Mexican Mafia allegedly tried to succeed in the president of the Mongols in 2014 as a part of an obvious effort to extort the bike membership. Santillan would have been the membership president on the time, but it surely was unclear from testimony whether or not such a gathering with the alleged Mexican Mafia-tied lawyer ever befell, or if such an extortion plot ever really occurred.
In a latest movement urging Decide Carter to disclaim the membership’s request for a brand new trial, federal prosecutors famous that no proof supporting the declare that Santillan knowledgeable on the membership or performed a job in legislation enforcement investigations has emerged regardless of a number of days of testimony that stretched over a number of months.
Fashioned in Montebello within the Nineteen Seventies by Hispanic bike riders who weren’t allowed to hitch the rival Hells Angels, the now-West Covina-based Mongols have been infiltrated by a number of legislation enforcement brokers as a part of a multi-agency investigation generally known as Operation Black Rain.
After a years-long legal case in opposition to particular Mongols members led to greater than 75 racketeering-related convictions, federal prosecutors went after the membership itself in an try and seize the Mongols’ logos, together with the prized patches that adorn the bikers’ vests.
Following a trial on the Santa Ana courthouse, a federal jury agreed that the Mongols are a legal group that supported drug trafficking and inspired vicious assaults and even homicide.
In 2019, Decide Carter ordered the membership to pay a $500,000 superb and positioned the group on 5 years of supervised probation. However the choose overrode a key portion of the jury’s verdict by ruling that taking the membership’s trademark could be unconstitutional.
Decide Carter’s resolution to dam the federal government from taking the Mongols’ logos is presently being reviewed by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals. As a first-of-its-kind authorized argument, the battle to find out the long run use of the bike membership’s distinctive insignia might in the end rise to the U.S. Supreme Court docket.