DA Raul Torrez's office blew previous case against man now accused of killing UNM ball player

- Torrez's office failed to comply with court deadlines in the case, failed to arrange for witness interviews and failed to respond to defense motions in the 2017 criminal case against Darian Bashir.

- Judge said DA's office was "culpable" in failing to comply with court orders. Here's the judge's opinion.

_ Torrez said case was dismissed because witness refused to testify. But the judge said she wasn't informed of witness problems until the last minute.

- Idiot and hysterical members of the news media buy into Torrez's misrepresentations.

Listen to the hysterical talk radio hosts and TV reporters and you get the idea that a man accused of murdering a UNM baseball player was on the streets for a 2017 arrest because a criminal-loving judge freed him just because the judge has no regard for the community's safety.

DA Raul Torrez's office blew the 2017 case against Darian Bashir

But it was Bernalillo County District Attorney Raul Torrez's office that screwed up the 2017 case against Darian Bashir so badly that a judge had to dismiss the criminal charges against Bashir, who is now accused of fatally shooting the UNM player, 23-year-old Jackson Weller.

Had Torrez’s office successfully prosecuted Bashir for the 2017 shooting, then he probably would not have been on the streets of Albuquerque in 2019, to be accused of shooting at others (February) and murder (May). Simply stated, those two violent crimes did not need to happen had Torrez’s not screwed up the 2017 case so badly that the charge was dismissed.

And just so reporters at KOAT, KRQE, KOB and talk show screamers understand, when charges are dismissed you aren’t guilty. Judges can’t (and shouldn’t) use dismissed charges to hold people in jail. Will we hear Bob Clark scream, or Nancy Laflin investigate this? That doesn’t make for ratings, they are looking for “outrage” so they can get more viewers / listeners to pump up their stations advertising dollars. Truth and knowledge be damned. It’s all about the money.

Torrez's office failed to comply with court deadlines in the case, failed to arrange for witness interviews and failed to respond to defense motions, according to a Jan. 22, 2019, decision in the case by state District Court Judge Cindy Leos. Here's Judge Leos's five-page order. It's only five pages, read instead of listening to the lies and half-truths on talk radio and TV.

And it's lies, and maybe even one-sixteenth truths, that the media and Torrez's office are peddling in the case. Torrez is doing the peddling, apparently to cover up his office's incompetence and its failure to properly serve the public, and the news media, especially the hysterical Bob Clark on KKOB Radio, is buying the half-truths and is deceiving the public,

Here's a line from a recent Albuquerque Journal story about the 2017 case involving Bashir that is misleading at best and an outright lie at worse:

“In November 2017, Darian Bashir allegedly walked up to a young man in Downtown Albuquerque and shot him at point-blank range. The case was dismissed because the victim – who survived – didn’t testify.”

Well, that summary and take on things, probably supplied by Torrez's office, isn't what the judge said. Here's the final paragraph from Judge Leos's order:

The judge said the DA's office was “culpable” in failing to meet court-ordered deadlines. That means the DA actions (or inactions) caused this case to be released in January of 2019. Four months later the same defendant stands accused of murder. Have any of these reporters thought of asking Raul Torrez if he believes his office bears some responsibility for Bashir being on the streets instead of in prison? Hey Bob Clark, lets hear you scream about this on Monday.

Here are some other failures the judge noted about how Torrez's office handled the case against Bashir:

- In November 2018, Bashir's attorney filed a motion to suppress information in the case. How did Torrez's office respond to the motion?

It didn't respond. In fact, it failed to respond. It failed to do its job.

“The state did not file a response to any of these motions,” Judge Leos's order said.

- During the case, Judge Leos “orally denied defendant's motions to dismiss the aggravated battery charge and the firearm enhancement,” her order said. But listen to Clark and others and you get the idea that Judge Leos dismissed the case against Bashir because she loves criminals and cares nothing about the community's safety.

And also understand this point which so many of you fools out fail to understand and accept unless you're charged with a crime. Bashir was presumed innocent until he is proven guilty, because that's how our system works. No one is guilty just because the cops and government say so. You are not guilty just because a PIO for APD or the DA gives a local journalist special “access”. An arrest is only a charge by law enforcement. In Albuquerque we have witnessed, over and over, people arrested, and publicly shamed by law enforcement and the media, only to have charges dropped or be acquitted in court.

But the crazed Bob Clarks of the world forget about the presumption of innocence when they determine that someone is guilty of a crime.

- “Neither defense nor the state were able to inform the Court whether or not the incident was indeed captured on video,” the judge's order said. “Neither party knew if the police camera nearby was even capable of recording. Neither party knew if the camera did indeed record, what happened to any video of the incident, and no witnesses were provided to answer any of these question.”

- The DA's office never provided to the defense—as required—an audio of a photo array in which a witness identified Bashir as the offender.

- “At no time was a motion filed by the state asking the Court to issue a material witness warrant,” the judge's order said. “No affidavit was presented to the Court indicating that the state was unable to secure the witness presence by subpoena as is required [by Court rules]. The state did not alert the Court in any manner that they were having difficulties with witnesses prior to the hearing date on Jan. 17, 2019, despite the fact that defense requested the suppression of these witnesses through his motion filed on November 9, 2018.”

Has the media in Albuquerque become so lazy that they are unwilling or unable to do any investigative research? Stories are fed to willing reporters and news directors, who drink it down like grape kool-aid at a Jim Jones picnic, by those in power (Torrez, Keller, Geier etc). These reporters are doing a disservice to the public and to their profession. They are “owned” by those in authority and that is not what the 1st Amendment was about.

Our local media, has in many respects, become a joke. But now that joke has turned serious as they seem to be leading uneducated citizens with misplaced anger toward judges and presumably innocent people. The local media is causing a hysteria of misinformation that unless corrected, may turn violent.

In regards to Bashir the media should be asking Raul Torrez, “Had your office not failed in prosecuting Bashir, would he have even been on the streets to commit murder in 2019?”

We are all waiting for this question to be asked and for Torrez to answer. If he holds true to his past, he will find someone else to blame. It seems to be how his office handles things. God how I miss Bob Schwartz!

The 2017 shooting case against Bashir was dismissed on Jan. 22 of this year. And it wasn't because a judge hates the community. It was because DA Raul Torrez's office failed to do its job.

In February of this year Bashir was arrested on another shooting charge. The judge let him free because he had no convictions and no pending criminal cases. Remember, because Torrez's office screwed up the 2017 case it was dismissed.

The hysterical and Constitution-hating Bob Clark and others went out of their minds when they learned that Bashir had been arrested on a shooting charge in 2017 and earlier this year. Clark, Torrez and others immediately blamed soft-on-crime judges for letting Bashir onto our streets. But, Clark and his maniacal, screaming crowd always conveniently forget that an arrest is not proof of a crime, that Americans are constitutionally entitled to bail and that in America, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

And you can bet that Clark and others in the media won't bother to read Judge Leos's order in the 2017 case. They won't because they can't get their heads out of Torrez's ass.