Hidalgo Co. JP election contest may resume Monday

EDINBURG — Much has already occurred in the election contest trial between Ramon Segovia and Sonia Treviño, the incumbent who won a May 28 Democratic runoff for Hidalgo County Precinct 3, Place 1 justice of the peace by just 31 votes.

Testimony in the trial began last week, with Segovia’s attorneys — led by Texas Democratic Party chair, Gilberto Hinojosa — calling as witnesses dozens of people who voted in the west county runoff.

By the end of the week, visiting Senior Judge Jose Manuel Bañales had disqualified nearly 60 votes. And of that sum, Bañales had further determined that a majority of those voters had cast their ballots for the incumbent, Treviño.

Last Thursday, Bañales kicked Rick Salinas, lead counsel for Treviño, off the case, citing professional misconduct.

Bañales gave Salinas the boot after the attorney made a spur of the moment utterance while cross-examining Segovia, who is mounting the election challenge by alleging that Treviño had cheated her way to an election win.

Segovia has alleged that the Treviño campaign — including members of her own family — illegally assisted scores of voters who were ineligible to receive assistance at the polls under the narrow criteria outlined in the Texas Election Code. But since the trial began, Salinas has argued that Segovia’s allegations amount to nothing more than “the pot calling the kettle black.”

According to the attorney, Segovia engaged in the very unlawful conduct that he is accusing the JP incumbent of, only Segovia’s efforts fell short.

“(Segovia) didn’t illegally assist enough in order to be able to make the win and that’s why he’s crying,” Salinas told The Monitor last week.

But it was in trying to prove that point that Salinas found himself disqualified as his client’s attorney last Thursday.

While pressuring Segovia on the stand about whether he had paid campaign workers to “haul votes,” Salinas strayed into a line of questioning over whether Segovia had also enlisted the help of candidates from other political races to help finance his campaign.

Salinas made himself a potential witness to the litigation by saying he, himself, had heard Segovia pitching the idea.

“Well, didn’t you find it out of your own mouth, Mr. Segovia, didn’t you go out and reach (out) to the other runoff candidates to help you financially with your race?” transcripts show Salinas asked Segovia on the witness stand last Thursday.

Segovia, in turn, asked the attorney how he knew that. Salinas replied, “Well, because I was there.”

Hinojosa called on Bañales to disqualify Salinas for committing professional misconduct.

After a brief verbal sparring match between the two attorneys, the judge did just that.

“You are disqualified. You’re not a lawyer in this case,” Bañales told Salinas.

However, the judge did allow Salinas to make a formal objection on the record through what’s known as a “bill of exceptions” before adjourning court for the day.

On Friday, Treviño’s co-counsel, Martin Golando, led her defense as the court slogged through more testimony from often bewildered voters who saw their ballots disqualified over assistance eligibility rules, whose semantics they didn’t seem to understand.

The last witness to testify Friday — a Spanish-speaking gentleman whose vote was disqualified — said he had accepted assistance because he had recently undergone cataract surgery and still had trouble seeing at the time of the runoff election.

But Hinojosa, who admitted to having undergone the procedure himself, countered that the surgery’s deleterious effects on vision are brief — too brief to have affected the voter days later when he went to the polls.

Hinojosa called still more voters on Monday, but by early Monday afternoon, their testimony came to a halt when the 13th Court of Appeals handed down a stay in the case.

Sonia Treviño, through another member of her legal team, Efrain Molina, had filed for a writ of mandamus — a superseding order to the lower state district court — to pause the trial proceedings while the appellate court considered her complaint.

Treviño argued that Bañales had abused his judicial discretion in disqualifying Salinas as her attorney.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel agreed with her and directed Bañales to vacate Salinas’ disqualification. Should the lower court judge decline to do so, the appellate judges will officially order him to do so, stated Justice Jaime Tijerina at the conclusion of the appeals court’s opinion.

In granting Treviño’s request to reinstate her attorney, the appellate judges made three findings.

First, they found Segovia had not sufficiently proven that Salinas’ serving the dual role of attorney and witness would cause the election challenger any “actual prejudice.” That’s largely because the two sides are trying the case directly before a legal expert — Judge Bañales — rather than a jury of laypersons as dictated by state law.

Second, Segovia failed to prove that Salinas’ potential witness testimony would serve as a critical linchpin in his strategy to defend his client.

“(T)he record does not support the conclusion that testimony from Salinas is ‘necessary to establish an essential fact’ or that any party genuinely needs his testimony,” Tijerina, the appellate judge, states in the opinion.

Finally, the appellate judges found that depriving a client of their chosen attorney should essentially be an option of last resort for a judge, as the Texas Supreme Court has repeatedly held it to be a “severe remedy.”

As such, they found that Bañales had overstepped when he tossed Salinas off the case.

The election contest trial is expected to resume next Monday.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: 

Testimony begins in Hidalgo County JP election contest trial