Case dismissals subject of debate in DA's race

EDINBURG – Rene Guerra gestures to a wall-length bookcase crammed with manila folders in one of his offices at the Hidalgo County Courthouse.

Each file contains a misdemeanor case against just one defendant. And as district attorney, he has final say over which of these thousands will end up in court and which cases will be dismissed in the interest of justice.

In recent days, however, that prosecutorial discretion has been called into question. A news story pointing out his office’s record of dismissing one-third of its DWI cases has Guerra feeling defensive on a recent morning.

“We don’t have the personnel or the court time to go after every one,” he said, nodding over at the stacks. “Can you imagine if you gave every one of these a jury trial?”

From a practical perspective he’s right. Nearly 20,000 criminal cases are filed in Hidalgo County courts each year, and as any prosecutor will tell you, taking them all before a jury would waste thousands of dollars and make managing court dockets impossible. It’s the job of a district attorney to make sure the most important cases make their way before a judge.

But in this election year, it’s how Guerra makes those decisions that have his critics howling. Two candidates aiming to take this job — both former employees — allege that in his nearly three decades in office, Guerra has allowed politics to influence those choices, prosecuting baseless cases against enemies to the fullest extent of the law and throwing out dozens of others as favors to his friends and allies.

“After 27 years in office, he’s like J. Edgar Hoover,” said Fidencio Guerra Jr., a long-time political enemy and current candidate for his job, referring to the former FBI director with an infamous reputation for using his post to settle personal scores. “He’s either done you a favor or has something over you. Either way, it buys your support.”

It’s a charge that has dogged Guerra for most of his career and one, he argues, voters have judged to be false in seven previous elections.

But in politics, unlike law, there are no rules against double jeopardy. And once again, Guerra finds himself preparing to argue the one case he hasn’t been able to dismiss — his own — in front of a jury that will decide his political future: the voting public.

“When you’ve been in office for as long as I have, you have some hurt feelings,” he said. “But there’s a lot of stuff that goes unwritten. If you go with the story on the surface, you’re never going to get to the root.”

QUESTIONED RECORD

Those that would prosecute him argue a case can be built against Guerra.

Over the years, he has stopped a handful of charges against high-profile defendants from making their way through the court system.

In 2004, for example, Guerra filed to have charges dropped against Hidalgo County Precinct 4 Commissioner Oscar Garza the day after a grand jury indicted him on allegations he entered into an illegal contract with a McAllen farmer. The district attorney defended that decision, saying there was insufficient evidence to show either had broken the law.

He took a similar stance a year later upon the detainment of State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, for bringing a 9 mm handgun into McAllen-Miller International Airport. The senator maintained he forgot the gun was in his briefcase. And Guerra argued he could never prove Hinojosa intended to break the law.

Then, a day after his last re-election victory in 2006 he dismissed a voter fraud case lodged against the son of former McAllen Mayor Othal Brand. Brand’s son — Othal Jr. — had been allegedly caught on tape discussing the buying and selling of votes in a city election. But Guerra said at the time that while he believed a crime had been committed, the tapes didn’t prove who was soliciting the votes.

“There are cases we know are being handled the way they shouldn’t be handled,” said Alma Garza, an Edinburg defense attorney who gave Guerra one of the tightest re-election races of his career in 2006 largely by alleging favoritism in these cases. She has returned to the same strategy this year in a second bid for the office.

More recently, Guerra has drawn fire for the dismissals of two cases involving assistant prosecutors arrested on drunken driving charges and a seven-month delay in filing another DWI case against former McAllen Mayor Leo Montalvo.

Al Alvarez, a defense attorney who has sparred publicly with Guerra over several cases in the past including the five-year prosecution of state District Judge Rudy Delgado on charges of drunken driving, evading arrest and misusing official information, argues that at best these dismissals damage Guerra’s credibility and at best show a culture of cronyism has infiltrated his office.

“The problem is, Rene Guerra does have his favorites. He’s going to treat Oscar Garza differently than he’s going to treat other people like Andy Rios or a Walo Bazan,” he said, referring to two constables who both faced theft charges and whose cases were prosecuted in front of a jury. Bazan was convicted in 2006 and is currently appealing that decision, Rios was eventually acquitted.

“Yes, the district attorney has discretion on which cases to pursue, but it should be based on the merits of the case not who owes you a favor,” Alvarez said.

POLITICAL VENDETTAS?

Even more disturbing, Guerra’s critics say, are his office’s run-ins with his personal enemies.

A decades-long feud between the district attorney and former Hidalgo County Judge Ramon Garcia spilled over into multiple cases in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

After Guerra accused a judge of treating one of Garcia’s clients favorably in 1988, Garcia took out a full page ad in The Monitor declaring his rival “guilty of incompetence.” Seven years later, Garcia – then the chairman of the Hidalgo County Democratic Party and the foreperson of a grand jury – issued a report accusing Guerra of refusing to prosecute a murder case to protect an acquaintance allegedly linked to the crime.

Guerra has always maintained that grand jury’s findings were a politically motivated jab from Garcia.

In 1987, Guerra prosecuted former county Court-at-Law Judge Manuel Trigo on theft charges that were later dismissed. Trigo, a McAllen attorney, shot back with his own lawsuit, claiming the district attorney targeted him out of jealousy over his appointment to the bench.

But Guerra insisted he never wanted Trigo’s job and brought the case against his rival because he felt it warranted grand jury attention.

“If I don’t present these cases to the grand jury, I’m accused of playing politics,” Guerra said in a recent interview. “If I do present to the grand jury, I’m accused of playing politics.

“Either way, I’m going to get blamed from all over the place for playing games.”

THE DEFENSE

But like in any good public trial, the case Guerra’s opponents have built against him seems less certain once the defense has its chance to present evidence.

At campaign events, Guerra holds up the fact that he has made controversial decisions on such politically damaging cases as a sign of his integrity and his desire to pursue justice wherever it leads.

“You have to make those decisions,” he said. “You can’t be Pontius Pilate and let public perception decide just because you don’t want to be hurt politically.”

Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño, an ally who describes Guerra as his political mentor, puts it more bluntly.

“Rene doesn’t care if he throws a hand grenade in his own backyard if it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

There was his campaign in the early ‘90s to bar the county’s misdemeanor judges from practicing law in federal court — work he argued posed a conflict of interest and distracted them from their duties on the bench.

“I inflicted some instant pain on the people who were hearing my cases,” Guerra said. “Who would do that? I did it. Not because I’m arrogant, but because I thought it was right.”

He touts his pre-trial diversion program for first-time misdemeanor offenders as one of the few instances of a prosecutor campaigning on taking a softer stance on some types of crimes.

By forgoing some prosecutions in minor cases, he argues he has saved taxpayers money and allowed hundreds of young people facing a first arrest to avoid a criminal record if they meet a set of probationary conditions.

While critics allege Guerra has used his discretion on who is eligible for this program to protect family friends from prosecution, he maintains that it is through this program — talking to the defendants who made a mistake and ran afoul of the law — that he gets the best sense that sometimes true justice is found outside of the courtroom.

“You can’t please people all of the time,” he said. “But when I first got elected, I promised I’d be available to the taxpayers. I’m an open door.”

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.