Attorney: Judge will review Handy's pre-trial release

McALLEN — A federal judge could decide as early as next week whether to revoke or permanently alter the conditions of Hidalgo County Commissioner Sylvia Handy’s bond, her attorney said.

Pre-trial monitors filed a motion Wednesday asking the court to review the elected official’s release after allegations surfaced that she tried to bribe a witness in her ongoing criminal case.

Handy has remained under house arrest since Monday on a temporary order issued until U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa has a chance to examine those accusations. Depending on the outcome of this latest court action, she could be sent to jail until her trial in January.

“She’s OK,” her lawyer, Al Alvarez, said Wednesday. “I was with her yesterday. She was with her family preparing for Thanksgiving.”

Handy faces multiple federal counts of conspiracy, tax fraud and harboring illegal immigrants for allegedly using taxpayer money to pay three women to perform housekeeping and babysitting services in her home.

According to the 11-count indictment in her case, the commissioner put the women — all of whom were in the country illegally — on the payroll at her Precinct 1 office even though none of them did any actual work for the county.

But on Monday, prosecutors told the court that Handy had offered $500 concert tickets to sister of one of those women, even though she appeared on a government list of potential witnesses against Handy. Handy’s $100,000 bond specifically prohibits her from contacting any witnesses in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Rodriguez said.

FBI agents returned to Handy’s Precinct 1 office Tuesday to see if any of the commissioner’s employees might have also felt pressured not to testify, Alvarez said.

But the attorney maintained his client had no intention of trying to influence witnesses. The concert tickets in question were actually a passes to a church fundraiser at which the Roma-based band Grupo Duelo was expected to perform, he said. Handy’s son wanted to offer them to the family of his former babysitter as a gift.

“The woman babysat for him since he was a child,” Alvarez said Wednesday. “He knew it was her favorite band.”

As of late Wednesday afternoon, no hearing date had been scheduled for Handy’s bond review.

______

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