Twin Peaks jury panel sent home after recusal motion
WACO -- About 180 potential jurors for the first Twin Peaks case set for trial were sent home abruptly Friday morning after the attorney for Bandido Dallas chapter president Christopher Jacob Carrizal filed a last-second, handwritten motion to recuse 19th State District Judge Ralph Strother from presiding over the trial.
Strother, who presided over an increasingly contentious hearing before beginning his address to the potential jury panel, was cut off mid-sentence when Casie Gotro, Carrizal’s attorney, presented the court with her hastily scribbled motion to recuse the judge.
Once a recusal motion is filed, a judge can no longer have anything to do with a case until the matter is settled. So Strother asked 54th State District Judge Matt Johnson to come over to finish impaneling the jury, including having panel members fill out questionnaires and hearing excuses, exemptions or disqualifications from jury duty.
As the parties huddled in a jury room outside the presence of the large panel, Gotro told Johnson that she also would be filing a motion to recuse him, although she had not done so by Friday afternoon.
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