Attorney disqualified from working Hidalgo County JP election contest

A judge Thursday disqualified Rick Salinas from representing Hidalgo County Justice of the Peace Sonia Treviño in her election contest trial after he said in court that he’d witnessed Treviño’s opponent, Ramon Segovia, make fundraising comments relevant to the lawsuit.

Segovia sued Treviño in June, alleging she’d won the May primary runoff for Hidalgo County Precinct 3, Place 1 Justice of the Peace by 31 votes because of illegalities in the election.

Treviño denied doing anything wrong, and Salinas has said her legal team intends to throw out many ballots illegally cast for Segovia.

Both sides had by Thursday evening hunkered down for a drawn out contest to see who could throw out the most votes when something unexpected happened.

Segovia, in jeans and a blazer, had taken the stand. He testified, while Treviño looked up at him with a wide grin, that he hadn’t employed people to assist voters in the election before being cross-examined by Salinas.

So far voters receiving assistance at the polling place illegally has been the central issue of the trial. Both sides claim the other benefited from ineligible voters receiving assistance.

Salinas, reclining in his chair to cross-examine Segovia Thursday evening, has been the bulldog of Treviño’s defense team.

Martin Golando and Efrain Molina, her other attorneys, have plodded through the drudgery of arguing for the legitimacy of votes for Treviño that Segovia’s lawyers have challenged since the trial started Monday.

Salinas, on the other hand, was largely reserved for more climactic pieces of the trial, like testimony from the candidates or opening statements. He was the defense team’s firecracker, peppering the trial with dramatic assertions and objections.

Salinas kept true to form questioning Segovia Thursday, pursuing disparate lines of questioning that often focused on the possibility of ineligible voter assistance, questions that elicited some choppy testimony on subjects like a trailer Segovia owns where he’d meet with campaign staff and performance in the original primary race for justice of the peace in March.

Sustained objections made by Segovia’s lawyer often cut those inquiries short.

After one objection, Salinas began a new line of questioning.

“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?” Salinas said.

“Out of my own mouth?” Segovia said.

“Yes, out of your own mouth,” Salinas replied.

“How do you know that,” Segovia asked.

“Well, because I was there,” Salinas said.

“So you’re a witness in this case?” Segovia shot back.

Gilberto Hinojosa, Segovia’s attorney, rose from his chair and lifted up his hand, like some sort of  mustachioed carnivore that had smelled blood in the water. The mood in the courtroom shifted from predictably entertaining to electrically unpredictable.

“He’s just admitted as being a witness in this case,” Hinojosa said. “I would ask that he be disqualified from proceeding with this case. He’s already said ‘I was there at that meeting.’ And he’s talking, asking [Segovia] about a meeting that he believes is relevant to the issues that you are discussing. He’s made himself a witness, your honor, and as a witness — because now he cannot at this point continue as an attorney in this case.”

Salinas disagreed, saying that he’d been referencing speeches Segovia had made that other people had heard as well. He said Segovia hadn’t responded to his questions about those speeches and had instead testified with a question.

“I didn’t have to respond. Maybe I should have said nothing,” Salinas said. “But at the end of the day, I’m not placing myself as a witness. And I’m not sure that Mr. Hinojosa would want me there testifying. Because if he’s gonna disqualify me, and then the next thing you know, I’ll be a witness on the stand.”

“I’m fine with that, your honor,” Hinojosa replied demurely.

State District Judge Jose Manuel Bañales disqualified Salinas as an attorney in the case, but allowed him a bill of review.

After briefly conferring with Treviño’s other attorneys, Bañales swore-in Salinas and he testified to questions posed by Molina.

Salinas testified that he’d been attempting to get some honesty out of Segovia related to his campaign and the campaign of Juan Alvarez, who successfully won the primary for the judgeship of 332nd state District Court in the May runoff.

“I think he was being disingenuous when being asked those questions by Mr. Hinojosa,” Salinas said.

Salinas maintained that he didn’t have any information that qualified him as a witness in the case.

It didn’t work.

“You’re excused. And you’re disqualified from the case,” Bañales reiterated blandly after Salinas’ testimony.

Salinas asked Bañales for permission to confer with Treviño, a request that Bañales responded to only by recessing court for the day.

If Salinas was in any way deterred by the day’s turn of events, he didn’t show it outside the courtroom Thursday evening, saying he felt he had Segovia on the ropes and riffing off classic rock.

“In the words of the Rolling Stones, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you just might find that you get what you need, baby,” he said.

Salinas said that Treviño’s legal team has options.

“These guys are going to go forward, I think we’re gonna have to file a writ of mandamus, number one. Number two, the ladies that he claims that he doesn’t know, they’re gonna come testify,” he said, referencing women who allegedly assisted pro-Segovia voters.

Often during the trial’s first few days, Salinas appeared to be rubbing Bañales the wrong way. Sometimes the judge appeared to be losing his patience.

“Let me finish,” Bañales told Salinas at one point, raising his voice after the attorney interjected a comment about Hinojosa’s request to disqualify him. “Please do not interrupt me. Because I want you to understand what I’m telling you. Understood?”

Salinas expressed, after the trial, concern over that sort of headbutting.

“I just think it’s very extreme. It makes me very cautious and suspicious, that’s all I’m gonna say,” he said.

Things have been tense, which was predictable given the political overtures of the trial.

The contest between Segovia and Treviño may be over a county seat with witnesses from various municipalities in western Hidalgo County, but it’s also a trial that has the fingerprints of Mission politics all over it.

At various points in it, attorneys have mentioned the 2018 election contest between former Mission mayors Armando “Doc” O’Caña and Norberto “Beto” Salinas.

Rick Salinas represented his father, Beto Salinas, in that case.

Veronica O’Caña, Doc O’Caña’s niece, featured into that trial because of her campaign work for her uncle.

This week, Veronica O’Caña’s name came up as an alleged assistor for at least one man who voted in May’s justice of the peace runoff, Marcos Cortez.

Bañales determined he wasn’t ineligible for assistance and disqualified his vote, despite Cortez failing to remember whether he’d even voted for Segovia or Treviño.

Cortez said he’d gone to vote to support Alvarez.

You don’t, however, have to remember six years back or comb through witness testimony from this week to be reminded of Mission politics when it comes to the election contest between Segovia and Treviño.

Before Rick Salinas’ disqualification, you only had to look over the bar at the candidates’ attorneys.

Rick Salinas formally declared in June that he intends to run for Mission mayor against current Mayor Norie Gonzalez Garza and reiterated that intention in court this week, saying that the JP’s race and Mission municipal politics are explicitly intertwined.

Garza didn’t hear Rick Salinas say that, but her daughter did.

Carina Garza De Luna is Hinojosa’s co-counsel, who sat opposite Salinas in the trial.

She’s been relatively quiet in court, mostly setting Hinojosa up for witness testimony and buzzing back and forth along the bar, laptop in hand.

Garza De Luna hasn’t been totally silent, though. At one point, when Hinojosa and Rick Salinas were disputing a facet of the trial that would ultimately go in Hinojosa’s favor, she interjected to make a point.

Rick Salinas interrupted.

“Around here there’s a local rule, it’s one lawyer per witness to argue,” he said.

Garza De Luna stopped speaking, but started shaking her head and kept shaking it while Rick Salinas spoke.

[email protected]