Court ordered to vacate disqualification of attorney representing Treviño in Hidalgo County JP election contest

The 13th Court of Appeals issued an order Wednesday directing a judge to vacate his decision disqualifying attorney Rick Salinas from representing Hidalgo County Justice of the Peace Sonia Treviño in her election contest against Ramon Segovia.

State District Judge Jose Manuel Bañales disqualified Salinas, Treviño’s lead attorney, from representing her after he said in court last week that he’d heard Segovia make a fundraising comment at a meeting prior to the election.

Segovia’s attorney argued that comment made Salinas a witness and precluded him from being an attorney in the case.

Treviño’s legal team, however, filed a petition for a writ of mandamus over the weekend that contended the disqualification was unjustified.

The court issued a stay after receiving the petition, which meant that proceedings ground to a halt on Monday and have remained idle this week.

An opinion issued by the 13th Court of Appeals Wednesday favors the arguments made by Treviño’s attorneys.

“We conditionally grant the petition for writ of mandamus, and we direct the trial court to vacate its order granting the motion for disqualification and to enter an appropriate order denying such motion,” it says. “Our writ will issue only if the trial court fails to promptly comply.”

Salinas was predictably jubilant Wednesday afternoon. He said he expected a decision to take longer, but now anticipates the trial to resume Monday.

“I respect the court’s decision. I think it made the right decision. I believe in what we’re doing. I believe that Mr. Segovia, in all due respect to him, is wrong. And in the words of Thin Lizzy, ‘The boys are back in town,’” he said.

In their petition asking for Salinas to be reinstalled, Treviño’s attorneys argued that he isn’t a witness and isn’t likely to be called as one.

The petition contended that the fundraising effort he alluded to falls outside the central scope of the trial (illegal voting) and that even if testimony about fundraising becomes essential to the trial, it could be obtained from a witness who isn’t Salinas.

Besides, the petition argued, the contest is a bench trial, not a jury trial, so Bañales doesn’t have to worry about jurors getting confused over Salinas’ potential dual role as counselor and witness.

A response filed by Segovia’s legal team Monday disagreed, arguing that Salinas’ remark on fundraising was a “wholly inappropriate comment and declaration to be a witness.”

Those attorneys argued Salinas had described fundraising as a “big issue” in the case and that he’s so far the only person to come forward as a witness with information about those finances.

Perhaps most caustically, the response argued that Bañales didn’t actually deprive Treviño of counsel by disqualifying Salinas because Salinas hadn’t shown up for the vast majority of her trial.

Treviño’s other two attorneys, Martin Golando and Efrain Molina, have more consistently represented her in court for the trial so far.

Salinas has often been absent from the courtroom, and according to the response, has not “participated in 90 percent of the proceeding, failing to question even one of the fifty plus voters who have been called to testify, leaving the trial of the case to [Treviño’s] two well qualified attorneys to try the case.”

Salinas shrugged off that characterization Wednesday. He said he’s often been working on the case outside of the courtroom and doing his job inside the courtroom when appropriate.

In its opinion, the 13th Court of Appeals appeared to agree that attendance in court wasn’t a central issue in Salinas’ disqualification.

The court instead focused on what both sides contended Salinas remaining in the courtroom might do to the trial.

The court found Segovia failed to prove that Salinas potentially serving as both counsel and a witness would actually hurt Segovia’s case. It also found that Segovia failed to prove Salinas’ testimony would be required in the trial.

“Segovia makes no showing that Salinas’s testimony is necessary or essential to determining the claims before the court,” the opinion says. “Further, even assuming the occurrence of the meeting was an essential fact, Segovia misstates the burden of proof regarding whether Salinas’s testimony was necessary to establish that fact. It was not Trevino’s burden to identify other witnesses who would be able to testify regarding these matters; rather, it was Segovia’s burden to explain why other sources would be insufficient to establish those facts.”

The opinion noted that disqualification is a “severe” remedy requiring an “exacting” standard of review, and ultimately held that Bañales’ court had “abused its discretion in disqualifying Salinas.”

The court also found that Salinas’ conduct in cross-examining Segovia was neither “unconscientious, unjust, or marked by a want of good faith.”

The most significant outcome of the whole disqualification drama seems likely to be the week-long delay in proceedings.

Delay is something Segovia’s attorney, Gilberto Hinojosa, has been fretting about even before the trial began. He said Monday that “time is of the essence” and expressed concern over litigation being tied up in an appeals process if Segovia winds up winning his suit.

Prior to the 13th Court of Appeals issuing its opinion favoring Treviño, Hinojosa expressed his frustration over the way it had handled the petition for a writ of mandamus being filed.

Hinojosa said his legal team had prepared its response over the weekend and hoped to file it relatively early Monday but couldn’t because the court said it hadn’t yet accepted Treviño’s lawyers’ petition yet.

“At 10:30 a.m. they issue a stay, without considering our response. I had never seen that before,” he said. “That was very upsetting.”

Segovia sued Treviño last month, arguing she’d won the May primary runoff election for Hidalgo County Justice of the Peace Precinct 3, Place 1 by 31 ballots because of voting improprieties.

Treviño denies those allegations, and Salinas has pledged to show even more people voted illegally for Segovia.

So far Segovia’s attorneys have successfully disqualified dozens of votes, almost all for Treviño, though Treviño’s lawyers haven’t put their witnesses on the stand yet.