Friday, September 30, 2022

People v. Boukes (Cal. Ct. App. - Sept. 29, 2022)

You learn from the very outset of the opinion that it's a murder case with a gang enhancement, and most of these cases are some subset of the Crips/Bloods or Norteno/Sureno gangs. The name of the gang involved wasn't mentioned at the beginning of the opinion, so I looked at the caption to see if that gave me any data on the front.

Nope. Defendant's name is Noy Estul Boukes. Interesting. Never seen anything like it before. I wonder about its origin, and continue to read the opinion.

At which point I discover that it's a white supremacist gang. That's unusual, though not unprecedented. You see some of those opinions coming out of prison assaults and the like. Though this one's from outside, in Hemet. Something different again.

On the white supremacist front, the only gang I'm familiar with is the Aryan Brotherhood, which seems the undisputed leader of the pack on this front. Justice McKinster tells me all about the significance of the numbers 14 and 88 to these types of gangs, which I already know. (I won't dignify the meaning of these numbers by repeating what they mean, but you can read the opinion to find out if you want.) But he also tells me that the gang at issue here is the "COORS" white supremacist gang. Which I've never heard of before. So that's interesting.

The opinion never tells me what "COORS" stands for, but I look it up and quickly discover those facts elsewhere. ("Comrades Of Our Racial Struggle") I also discover what it means when someone has a Coors Beer tattoo, which I've actually seen before. Huh. Never knew that. Thought it just meant they really liked the brand. Now I know the truth.

There's a whole lot of doctrine in the opinion, and even a concurrence, all of which you can read if you'd like. But I just thought I'd share for now what I learned about this particular gang.

Not the most pervasive gang in the universe, nor the most important information in the universe, but worth knowing, I figure.

(Here, by the way, is what Mr. Boukes looks like. 6'5". With a ton of face and neck tattoos. Yikes.)