Will Waco Stand Up March 6th and correct the wrong? Twin Peaks incident between motorcycle clubs looms large over primary

Reyna’s father, Felipe Reyna, is a former McLennan County district attorney and a former justice on the 10th Court of Appeals. His grandfather was the janitor at the McLennan County Courthouse and was loved by county employees.

Johnson’s father, Joe N. Johnson, was a McLennan County justice of the peace for 24 years and was judge in 170th State District Court for 16 years. His grandfather owned and operated the first service station in Waco at South Fifth Street and Webster Avenue.

Reyna, 45, and Johnson, 61, are embroiled in a hotly contested Republican primary battle as Reyna seeks his third term as McLennan County district attorney. Reyna has declined to answer questions from the Tribune-Herald or return phone calls for the past five years and continued that informational black-out for this story. Reyna, a former defense attorney, defeated 24-year incumbent John Segrest eight years ago and had no opponents on the ballot four years ago, beating back a last-minute write-in campaign from Robert Callahan.

Waco attorney Seth Sutton withdrew his name from the Democratic primary last week, and Daniel Hare, director of employee relations and engagement at the Baylor University Law School, will be on the November ballot for DA as an independent.

Johnson was a plaintiffs’ attorney in Dallas for 30 years and ran an unsuccessful campaign in 2016 for state district judge in Dallas County before moving back to Waco last year. In recent public forums, Reyna has criticized Johnson for living and working outside McLennan County and his lack of experience in criminal court.

Johnson has countered that his trial experience with complex civil actions and his management of a law firm that employed 30 people for 30 years gives him ample experience to be the next district attorney.

“I think that is my strength, to be able to work with people and to motivate people and to be an effective administrator,” Johnson said. “When elected, I look forward to talking to every one of the current employees in the district attorney’s office and sit down and listen to them and see what their concerns are. Hopefully, I will be able to keep most of them.”

While Johnson said he wants to set aside the negative aspects of the race and focus on his qualifications and experience in the final days before the March 6 primary, it is clear the colossal Twin Peaks case and the manner in which Reyna has handled the cases of 154 bikers indicted in the shootout has hung over the campaign like a murky haze.

Reyna has been bombarded with dozens of motions from defense attorneys representing Twin Peaks defendants, some of which came with affidavits from Reyna’s former first assistant, Greg Davis, who said he resigned over what he described as Reyna’s two-tiered system of justice and because he effectively dismissed cases for political gain. Twin Peaks defense attorneys continue to seek to disqualify Reyna on allegations that he thought he could benefit politically from the mass arrests of the Twin Peaks defendants, that he hijacked the initial investigation and usurped the authorities of veteran police officers and that he has a financial stake in seeing the cases prosecuted because of more than 100 pending civil rights lawsuits filed against him and others by bikers in an Austin federal court.

Last week, Reyna dismissed 13 Twin Peaks cases that had been pending almost three years, refused eight others that were not indicted and recused his office from two other biker’s cases just hours before a hearing at which two bikers were seeking his disqualification from their cases. Reyna’s actions canceled the necessity for the hearing.

Reyna explained that he and his staff re-evaluated the Twin Peaks cases and dismissed some while the office refocuses on those with a higher degree of culpability.

However, Johnson and the attorneys charged that Reyna took the actions necessary to cancel the hearing because he didn’t want to be put under oath as a witness and he couldn’t afford for voters to hear what the other witnesses, including Davis, were going to say before the primary election.