Judge threatens contempt charges for further Edinburg exercise suit delays

A judge Tuesday said she would hold witnesses testifying in relation to Edinburg school district’s nude exercise suit in contempt and maybe even throw them in jail if they do anything that further delays court proceedings.

In 2024 Robert Vela High Head Football Coach made some student athletes exercise in locker rooms in a state of undress as a punishment.

In September, Raul Rocha, the father of one of those students, sued Alonzo and two other Edinburg school district employees over that incident.

The court heard testimony related to the suit in December at a hearing. 476th District Court Judge Nereida Singleterry recessed after attorneys on both sides of the suit asked for time to review documents.

Disagreement over documents Tuesday caused Singleterry to again recess the case and admonish attorneys on both sides.

“I’m tired of these games that are being played — because they are games,” she said.

Singleterry said she would not recess the case again and pledged to hold anyone who causes another delay in proceedings in contempt of court — and potentially have them arrested.

“Which means I can fine them and also put them in jail. And I’ve done that before. I will not hesitate to do that,” she said. “We’re trying to get through this case and all the cases, however I’m getting a little bit disappointed with some of the games that are being played in this courtroom.”

An issue with Superintendent Mario Salinas’ subpoena caused Tuesday’s recess after a couple hours of testimony.

Salinas testified that when he received the subpoena related to the case he directed ECISD Director of Personnel Mark Micallef to send responsive documents to the school district’s attorneys without reviewing them personally.

Attorney Javier Pena, who is representing Rocha, showed Salinas some documents Tuesday while he testified.

Salinas said the documents appeared to be responsive to a 2024 Texas Education Agency subpoena rather than the subpoena for Rocha’s suit.

Pena accused defendants of purposely withholding documents he subpoenaed.

“Well, they were ordered to be produced today for testimony your honor,” Pena said. “Now, we’ve ran into this the last time. They didn’t want to produce documents. We subpoenaed them. They asked us to do discovery. We did that. And we subpoenaed these documents. They again are refusing to produce those documents.”

Pena said Salinas should be sanctioned or held in contempt until he produced those documents.

“That’s not the way we’re supposed to work. That’s not how it works. He was subpoenaed to bring documents. He didn’t do it,” Pena said.

Andrea Vela, an attorney representing the school district’s employees, said her firm had produced a copy of the documents from the TEA subpoena as part of the response to Pena’s subpoena.

“We included all of the documents that were provided to us and that were responsive based on our review to his discovery request to the defendants as well as the subpoena to Dr. Salinas,” she said.

At one point Vela said no additional documents exist responsive to Pena’s subpoena, however she didn’t definitively answer whether any other documents exist when Singleterry asked her that question directly.

Kevin O’Hanlon, the lead attorney representing the school district’s employees, said he thought his firm had produced all of the documents it should have, though he acknowledged that his attention has been elsewhere lately.

“To my knowledge, we’ve produced all the documents in terms of what’s out there,” he said. “I flew in last night after midnight to get here because I was in a federal jury trial for the last two weeks.”

Singleterry bluntly pointed out that O’Hanlon has a group of attorneys who work for his firm and said the hearing couldn’t proceed without resolving the issue.

“There is a subpoena for Dr. Salinas,” she said. “And he’s not an exception to every other witness that comes before this court. Now, he’s testifying that he produced all those documents to your office. That you were busy, I understand, but there’s other attorneys in your office and there’s a legal obligation.”

Testimony is slated to resume Wednesday afternoon.