Mistrial Declared in Trial of Texas Syndicate Member Tomas Barrera

Jan 13th, 2009

A mistrial is declared in a 2006 kidnapping and murder case of an alleged Sinaloa cartel hit man.The 49th district court declared a mistrial this morning after two jurors were disqualified.

“It became evident that one of the jurors suffered from a physical ailment and prevented her from continuing to serve on this panel, the judge disqualified her.”Then another juror came forward disclosing information that also disqualified them from serving on a jury panel.“Even though we started out with 13 jurors two of them weren't able to be present before the trail for various reasons and from the viewpoint of the defense it was unacceptable to go forward with 11 jurors.”

For now the case against an alleged Texas Syndicate gang member is momentarily on hold.

Tomas Barrera is accused of being the mastermind behind a botched kidnapping and shooting death of an alleged Sinaloa Cartel hit man back in 2006

For police it was a busy year when the drug war across the border exploded

The turf war was on.

Would be their 24th murder case which took a detour but the defense says whether now or later he's ready for the trial.

“We believe very strongly that we would be able to show that mister Tomas Barrera wasn't anywhere near the scene of the crime when it occurred.”“We believe that the only evidence that the state has to connect him to this crime is extra ordinary weak evidence in fact they intended to rely on the testimony of someone who was at the scene of the crime and participated in the murder and who from what i understand at this point in time is going to e given immunity.”

However the assistant district attorney Uriel Druker whose not disclosing too much information about the case says, this is not a set back for his team.“It doesn't affect the case as of now however since it’s an ongoing case I really can't comment into much detail about the facts of the case or anything.

”The trial has been rescheduled for a later date.

According to the district attorney's office, if found guilty Barrera could face up to 99 years in prison for engaging in organized criminal activity and another 22 years for conspiracy.

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