Jurors Selected For Gypsy Trial Charges Against Marks Family Related To ‘89 Suit Against City
What’s bound to be an unusual criminal trial - including everything from allegations of a Gypsy leader urinating on his aunt’s lawn to questioning of a CBS News correspondent - began Monday in Spokane.
Federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against eight members of a large Gypsy family.
A jury was selected Monday. Opening statements from attorneys are scheduled Wednesday morning, followed by testimony from prosecution witnesses.
Those on trial include James “Senator” Marks and his brother, Robert “Bobby” Marks, who describe themselves as leaders of Gypsy Church of the Northwest.
They and six others are accused of jury tampering and obstruction of justice for allegedly threatening witnesses who are helping the city of Spokane defend itself in a pending civil rights case.
The lawsuit was filed in 1989 by James and Robert Marks, and twodozen other members of their family.
They say their rights were violated when police conducted searches of two Gypsy family homes in June 1986. The Washington Supreme Court later ruled the searches for stolen property were illegal and involved outrageous police conduct.
In the criminal trial, the prosecution alleges the defendants “used intimidation, physical force, threats, corrupt persuasion and misleading conduct to influence, delay and prevent witnesses from testifying” in the civil rights case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Wilson said the FBI can’t locate its informer, David H. Elton III, formerly of Spokane, who posed as a reporter and secretly recorded interviews with James Marks.
Defense attorneys asked Judge Frem Nielsen to order the government to produce Elton, who is believed to be living in Washington, D.C.
The defense attorneys say the criminal case is nothing more than an attempt to bully the defendants to drop their lawsuit against the city.
What the prosecution calls “witness intimidation” is nothing more than a protracted family fight stemming from the police raids more than a decade ago, according to the defense attorneys.
The acts of alleged intimidation include James Marks urinating on the front lawn of the home of his uncle and aunt, Johnny and Barbara Marks. They now live in Tacoma.
In interviews, James Marks admitted the act. He said it is “called for in Gypsy culture, because my aunt raised her skirt and exposed herself to me” in a defiling act.
When CBS News heard about the Gypsy case, the network sent a correspondent and producers to Spokane in 1994 to film a segment for the news magazine “Eye to Eye.”
The network taped what police later described as an assault between two factions of the Marks family.
City police seized the CBS News video when they served a search warrant in the middle of the night at the crew’s hotel room.
That raid later prompted an official apology from the city to CBS News.
, DataTimes