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Thread: Death Penalty Pursued for Porge Kue, Ger Lee and Anthony Montes in 2019 CA Quadruple Murder

  1. #1
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    Death Penalty Pursued for Porge Kue, Ger Lee and Anthony Montes in 2019 CA Quadruple Murder



    Fresno backyard shooting killed 4 was 'targeted act of violence', police say

    By Dom Calicchio and Greg Norman
    Fox News

    California police are on the hunt Monday for a group of “unknown suspects” who opened fire last night at a backyard football viewing party in Fresno and left four people dead.

    Investigators say 10 people overall were hit with gunfire during the incident, which unfolded around 8 p.m. local time.

    Three people were reported dead at the scene, while a fourth succumbed to his injuries at a local hospital. Five of those wounded had non-life threatening injuries while a sixth person is being treated after he was grazed by a bullet, according to Fresno Deputy Chief Michael Reid.

    “What we do know is that this was a gathering, a family and friend gathering in the backyard,” Lt. Bill Dooley told the Fresno Bee. “Everyone was watching football this evening when unknown suspects approached the residence, snuck into the backyard and opened fire.”

    Reid told reporters at a Sunday night news conference that all 10 of the victims were Asian males between the ages of 25 and 35, and about three dozen people attended the party.

    “Thank God that no kids were hurt, because there were several kids and females there in attendance at this party,” Reid said.

    As of Monday morning, no descriptions of the suspects were available.

    “We are going to everything that we can to find out who the perpetrators are and bring them to justice,” Reid added.

    Fresno City Councilman Luis Chavez, who represents the southeast portion of the city, where the shooting occurred, described it a "senseless and criminal act."

    “This action is not a reflection of our community and our officers are working diligently to piece together the sequence of events that led up to this, but more importantly, to bring all those involved to justice,” Chavez told the Fresno Bee.

    Investigators on scene included personnel from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

    The slayings in Fresno followed a recent wave of violence in California that has included the murder-suicide deaths of a family in San Diego on Saturday; the deaths of two high school students in Santa Clarita plus the shooter on Thursday; and the deaths of at least four people at a house party in Orinda on Halloween night.

    Neighborhood resident Choua Vang told the Fresno Bee that a nearby resident's house had been shot at just the previous week.

    “We’re thinking about moving out of the neighborhood,” he said. “We don’t know how many more shootings there will be.”

    Earlier Sunday, a man in his 20s was fatally shot in another part of the city. Police did not say whether the two shooting incidents were related.

    https://www.foxnews.com/us/californi...deaths-reports
    Last edited by Steven; 01-23-2022 at 09:23 AM.

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    California backyard party shooting: Fresno police arrest 6 suspected gang members

    By Frank Miles
    Fox News

    Six suspected gang members have been arrested in connection with the shooting deaths of four men in November at a backyard gathering of family and friends in Fresno that they believed was a rival gang’s party, California police said Tuesday.

    Fox 26 reported that the suspects each admitted to being members of the Mongolian Boys Society gang, and said they were evening the score against a rival gang called the Asian Crips.

    Fresno Police Chief Andy Hall said at a news conference that the suspects believed the rival gang was responsible for killing a member of their gang hours earlier.

    Four people were killed and six others injured on Nov. 17 when gunmen entered the back of a Fresno home through an unlocked gate and used semiautomatic weapons to open fire on people watching a football game in the backyard.

    The news outlet reported that the six suspects who were arrested in connection with the deadly shooting are 25-year-old Billy Xiong, 27-year-old Anthony Montes, 26-year-old Porge Kue, 25-year-old Johnny Xiong, 31-year-old Pao Vang and 19-year-old Jhovanny Delagao.

    The police chief didn’t say who the shooters were specifically, but that all six planned the attack.

    The six men who were arrested are all being held $11 million bail each, and it’s unclear if they had lawyers yet who could speak on their behalf.

    Billy Xiong's brother, Randy Xiong, was the gang member who was slain 16 hours before the backyard shooting.

    “We know now that this was a retaliatory shooting toward the gang believed responsible for Randy Xiong’s death,” Hall said.

    All the victims were of Hmong descent; the shooting rattled the central California city, home to the second-largest Hmong community in the country.

    Hmong, an ethnic minority group from East and Southeast Asia, fought on the side of the United States in the Vietnam War. After the war, the U.S. moved them to places in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

    In California, Hmong settled in Fresno and the Central Valley, where sponsors hoped they could find work given their agricultural background.

    https://www.foxnews.com/us/californi...d-gang-members

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    $24M bail against alleged mastermind of party shooting

    AP

    FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — A judge in central California set a nearly $24-million bail for the alleged mastermind of a shooting at a party that left four men dead.

    Ger Lee, 27, was recently extradited to Fresno from Minnesota, where he was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder in the Nov. 17 shooting, the Fresno Bee reported Tuesday.

    The four victims were killed after gunmen entered the yard of a Fresno home through an unlocked gate and used semiautomatic weapons to open fire on people watching a Sunday night football game. Six other people were wounded.

    Lee was expected to be arraigned in Judge Michael Idiart’s courtroom on Tuesday, but his attorney Curtis Sok asked for the case to be continued until next Tuesday. Idiart agreed and set Lee’s bail at $23.7 million.

    Lee and six other alleged members of the Mongolian Boys Society gang were arrested and charged for the mass shooting.

    The other six defendants face state or federal court charges. Charged in state court are Anthony Montes, 27; Porge Kue, 26; and Billy Xiong, 25. Each has been charged with four counts of murder and 12 counts of attempted murder.

    Three others face charges in federal court. Johnny Xiong, 25, along with Pao Vang, 30, and Jhovanny Delgado, 19, are charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the aid of racketeering.

    The alleged gang members told investigators they were avenging the death of one of their members’ brother, who was killed earlier that day, according to a criminal complaint filed in Superior Court.

    https://apnews.com/b561adefb23915014f61b4b86e76c4ce

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    DA to pursue death penalty against 3 accused of 2019 Fresno mass shooting

    Porge Kue, Ger Lee and Anthony Montes will face the death penalty in the murder trial

    By ABC30 News

    FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The Fresno County District Attorney's Office will pursue the death penalty against three men of the four men accused of a mass shooting at a football party in November 2019.

    Porge Kue, Ger Lee and Anthony Montes will face the death penalty in the murder trial.

    Prosecutors say the three men opened fire at a home in east central Fresno during a football party, killing four people and injuring six others.

    The fourth man accused in the shooting, Billy Xiong, will not face the death penalty. Officials say he faces life without the possibility of parole.

    https://abc30.com/fresno-mass-shooti...gang/11495309/
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    Mass-killing defendant has no attorney. Should Fresno court drop death penalty because of it?

    BY YESENIA AMARO

    Two civil rights organizations are asking the Fresno County Superior Court to take the death penalty off the table for the alleged mastermind of a 2019 Fresno mass shooting because they say defendant Ger Lee has been without an attorney for several months.

    ACLU of Northern California and the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice in a letter sent to Fresno County Superior Court Judge Houry Sanderson are also calling for the court to immediately appoint an attorney to represent Lee.

    The organizations say Lee has languished in the justice system with no counsel representation for four months while the case against him has moved forward. According to the letter, Lee’s appointed attorney dropped the case after repeatedly asking the court to properly compensate him.

    According to the letter, the court has been unable to find another attorney to represent Lee for the same compensation, which has led to Lee going without an attorney.

    Fresno County Superior Court media coordinator Kelly Pelletier confirmed that the court received the letter this week. Suzanne Olguin, with the Fresno County Superior Court, responding to questions from The Bee on behalf of Pelletier, said the court had no comment on the death penalty charge Lee faces “as charging decisions are made by the District Attorney.”

    Lee was extradited from Minnesota, where he was arrested in connection to the Fresno shooting that killed four people and injured six others. Six other members of the Mongolian Boys Society gang are facing charges over the mass shooting. Earlier this year, the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office said it will seek the death penalty for three.

    Emi Young, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, said the justice system relies on attorneys to “pursue the avenues of investigation that law enforcement ignored or overlooked, and to test the reliability of the government’s evidence.”

    “When someone is deprived of this kind of assistance in a capital case, that inherently affects the reliability of the proceedings against them,” Young said. “One of the core issues in Fresno County is a flat-fee structure for attorneys in death penalty cases that does not compensate, fully compensate, counsel for the work that they are required to perform in these type of cases.”

    Young said that under a flat-fee system there is no relationship between the amount of work an attorney is required to perform and the payment that’s received. For example, she said, there could be an attorney who might not want to do as much work and there could be another attorney who wants to ethically represent their client and do all the work that’s required, but both would receive the same amount of compensation.

    Beyond their argument on Lee’s behalf, the organizations are asking the court to eliminate a flat-fee contract system. “Essentially, the Fresno court is requiring an attorney who is appointed in these types of cases to work for free,” Young said.

    Olguin said the court’s compensation methodology is not a flat rate, and shared a 20-page policy document on special appointments. The record shows that appointed counsel get paid based on an “approved category attorney fee.”

    According to the policy, for a Category 1 attorney fee rate, consisting of a case involving one defendant and one victim, the rate is $60,000; for a Category 2 attorney fee rate, consisting of a case involving one defendant and one or more victims killed in the same incident, the rate is $95,000; and for a Category 3 attorney fee rate, consisting of a case with one defendant and more than one victim killed at different times, the rate is $130,000.

    Attorneys appointed to cases where the death penalty is being sought appear to be entitled to receive $30,000-$50,000 above the attorney fee, according to the policy.

    An approved hourly fee for attorneys is $102, but the hourly rate is only applied when a category fee or schedule payment is not applicable, the record says.

    Olguin said the compensation was last updated on May 17, 2022. She wouldn’t say how the Fresno court’s compensation compares to that of other superior courts across the state.

    “The Court recently made changes and has no immediate plans to make further changes,” she told The Bee in an email.

    Fresno criminal defense attorney Michael Aed was the counsel representing Lee who asked the court to remove him from the case following the compensation issues. The Bee couldn’t reach Aed.

    Young said another defense attorney in the case filed a request to be removed as counsel for similar funding issues.

    Jane Ann Boulger, another attorney in this co-defending case, didn’t return inquiries from The Bee seeking comment.

    The next hearing in the case is Thursday.

    https://amp.fresnobee.com/news/local...268527792.html
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    California lawyer quit death penalty case over court-ordered pay scale. Why he’s back

    By Yesenia Amara
    The Fresno Bee

    The Fresno County Superior Court has offered an increased compensation for an attorney to resume representation of the alleged mastermind of a 2019 Fresno mass shooting who had gone without counsel for several months.

    The court’s action follows an early November request by the ACLU of Northern California and the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice for the court to address compensation issues that left defendant Ger Lee languishing in the justice system with no attorney. The two civil rights organizations, in their Nov. 7 letter to the court, also asked for an immediate appointment of an attorney to represent Lee, and for the court to take the death penalty off the table, given his months-long lack of legal representation.

    On Friday morning, Fresno criminal defense attorney Michael Aed was reappointed to represent Lee with a modified compensation that he accepted.

    Aed was representing Lee but dropped the case earlier this year after repeatedly asking the court to better compensate him. His requests to the Fresno County Superior Court were denied, Aed said, and he eventually went to the Fresno-based 5th District Court of Appeal, which also denied his request.

    Soon after the two organizations stepped in, Aed said, he received a call from the Fresno County Superior Court asking if he would be interested in submitting a new funding request. On Monday, he submitted a request and gave the court two options. On Thursday, the court issued an order accepting the option for an hourly rate of $150 with a cap of $100,000. At $90,000, Aed can submit a request for another $100,000, but he has to explain why the additional funds are needed.

    “This has been a long road,” Aed said, thanking the organizations for shedding light on the issue. “That’s the path that they (the court) want to take, so at this point in time, I’m inclined to accept that.”

    There was a regularly scheduled hearing on the case Friday during which Aed appeared and was reappointed.

    By then, Lee had gone without an attorney for five months.

    Fresno County Superior Court officials on Friday said the court had no comment about the case.

    Under the court’s policy for special appointments, an approved hourly fee for attorneys is $102, but the hourly rate is only applied when a category fee or schedule payment is not applicable. There are three categories under the policy, and each category compensates for specific kinds of cases.

    The co-defendant case in which Lee is a part of doesn’t quite fit into any of the cases described in the three categories, given that the case involves multiple defendants and multiple victims.

    NEW DEAL CONSIDERED AN EXCEPTION

    According to the court order, given the unusual circumstances of this case, the court is making an exception to the pay structure currently in place for this case. The hourly $150 rate is not retroactive.

    Lee was extradited from Minnesota, where he was arrested in connection to the Fresno shooting that killed four people and injured six others. Six other members of the Mongolian Boys Society gang are facing charges in the mass shooting. Earlier this year, the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office said it will seek the death penalty for three.

    “We have decided as Americans that all people in this country have a right to counsel — no matter their income or the charges they’re facing. That basic principle is at the core of our justice system,” Emi Young, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, said in a statement to The Bee on Thursday. “Fresno County should not be using a flat fee system to compensate court-appointed counsel, especially in complex capital cases that require more work hours than the flat fee covers.”

    Lee has gone without an “attorney for five months because of Fresno’s inadequate payment scheme,” Young said.

    “We hope the Court’s decision today indicates a willingness to fully fund defense representation in all cases moving forward, and to protect everyone’s constitutional right to counsel,” she said.

    OTHER ATTORNEYS WANT FUNDING CHANGE

    Other attorneys in the co-defendant case have also requested funding modifications.

    “I would hope that the court would reconsider and have a consistent funding order that reflects the same for all,” Aed said.

    In November, attorney Jane Ann Boulger, who is representing another defendant in this case, said their work wasn’t considered “valuable enough” to pay them appropriately.

    “It just comes down to how nobody cares if these kids get a fair trial,” she told The Bee.

    As attorneys in private practice who take on court special appointments, she said, they also have to pay their employees and “keep their business afloat.”

    “It’s sad that our goal is literally to keep our head above water,” she said.

    https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local...269496232.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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