Fourteen suspects arrested in connection to Operation Matador will formally face their charges in a Northern Santa Barbara County courtroom on April 7.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Ann Bramsen confirmed with the Sun that the defendants will be arraigned starting at 8:30 a.m. in Dept. 6 in the Cook Division of the Santa Barbara County Superior Court.
There are two separate cases related to the operation, Bramsen said. In one, 12 defendants will be charged with murder; in the other, two defendants will face murder conspiracy charges.
The defendants, who are suspected to be part of the international MS-13 gang, were arrested in March 2016 as a result of Operation Matador—a yearlong investigation led by the Santa Maria Police Department into the more than one dozen homicides the city experienced in 2015.
On March 31, defense attorneys Tom Allen and Stephen Dunkle filed motions seeking gag orders that would prohibit police, witnesses, lawyers, or any court official in the case from publicly discussing the case. According to the filing, Dunkle and Allen said “extrajudicial communications” would compromise their clients’ rights to a fair trial.
This article appears in Apr 6-13, 2017.