Dear Friend and Reader:
Here’s the latest on the Cheney indictment in Texas from My San Antonio, a San Antonio news website:
RAYMONDVILLE — Willacy County prosecutor Juan Angel Guerra stumped a presiding judge and attorneys for clients as high up as Vice President Dick Cheney when he failed to show up to court on his own grand jury’s indictments.
The no-show infuriated attorneys who’d spent the day milling about with what they’d hoped would be slam-dunk motions to quash the cases.
And it put Presiding Judge Manuel Bañales in a position he said he’d never been in before.
“At the very least I expected the district attorney to be here,” Bañales said, asking Guerra’s office manager, “Do you know where he is?”
The manager, Hilda Ramirez, was subpoenaed by defense attorney J.A. “Tony” Canales when buzz circulated in the courthouse that Guerra was nowhere to be found.
Canales summoned Ramirez to act as representative for Guerra in hopes the motions could go forward.
She told the judge she had been trying to reach Guerra all day.
When Bañales asked if she were concerned for Guerra’s safety she said she would not know how to answer the question.
Guerra’s cell phone message box was full much of the day, but an assistant who answered the line late Wednesday said he was not ill.
BaГ±ales said he would not hear the motions without the state present and set arraignments for Friday morning.
He allowed all defendants to waive court appearances and appear via their lawyers and set a jury to be called Dec. 8.
“The State of Texas is entitled to have its day in court,” he said.
Guerra, a 53-year-old Rio Grande Valley prosecutor who drew national attention for suing counterparts in the county justice system and staging a protest with barnyard animals, long has alleged high-ranking corruption in the deals that brought the impoverished county a $60 million immigration detention center.
On Monday, he got a grand jury to sign off on a slew of indictments including an acceptance of honorarium charge against state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., and an engaging in organized criminal activity charge against Cheney and Gonzales.
Cheney is accused of contributing to the neglect of federal immigration detainees by contracting for-profit prisons.
“By working through corporations as prisons for profit, Defendant Richard Cheney has committed at least misdemeanor assaults of our inmates and/or detainees,” the indictment reads, adding that a “money trail” can be traced to Cheney’s substantial investments in the Vanguard Group, which invests in privately run prisons.
This morning, attorneys filed motions to quash indictments “for prosecutorial vindictiveness and failure to allege an offense.”
“In most of the indictments, the prosecutor identifies himself as the victim. The prosecutor has usurped for himself the role of prosecutor, judge, victim, and director of the grand jury. His conflict of interest and abuse of office require that he be stopped,” Canales said.
A number of experts were shaking their heads at the indictment.
Shannon Edmonds of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, after reviewing a faxed copy of the indictment against Cheney and Gonzales, said he’d never seen one like it.
“It’s a creative indictment, but I don’t think it properly alleges any crime,” Edmonds said. “It’s more of just a rambling narrative … I think a court will find that it’s legally insufficient in that it fails to allege a crime.”
Chip B. Lewis, a prominent criminal defense lawyer in Houston whose clients have included former Enron chairman Ken Lay, said, “It’s a shame. I’m not a Cheney supporter by any means. I’m Democrat. But the misuse of our criminal justice system is apparent … It just smacks of partisanship and it’s a shame that credence can be lent to this type of charge because you have a grand jury indictment.”
Lewis said, “I don’t think he (Cheney) will ever spend a day in court.”
We’ll keep you up to date on this story as it breaks.
Yours and truly,
Fe Bongolan from San Francisco
Kinky makes too much sense. What fun would that be. Keep me laughing.
Shanna –
Molly is looking down on us from above, and having a good laugh. I’m sure she wishes she could still be stirring up the muck on “Shrub” and his minions. As it is, Kinky Friedman can dish out a lot about Texas politics; I was actually hoping he’d gotten elected as governor last election down there, but no such luck.
Like I said, it’ll be a great plot, this thing. And yeah, we’re heading into The Big Shift. That alone would make folks more tetchey that usual. Will be writing lots more about that soon.
Apparently DA called into a local TV station this evening to explain his absence: He had gone down to Mexico to pick up some carry-out tamales for his mother and got caught in traffic coming back at the border…
He actually called in to say he was in Mexico on a prescheduled trip and hadn’t expected the indictments to go through so quickly. He had planned to be in court on Monday. That’s his story anyway. I think the guy is crazy like a fox. You’d have to be down there.
Here’s the link. http://www.newschannel5.tv/2008/11/20/1001540/Guerra-Calls-Back
And Brendan: I agree; this is TOTALLY Texas kind of stuff. Where is Molly Ivins when you need her?)
“I was making an admittedly dimly-lit connection to his apparent inability to attend court ”
Brendan:
Let’s hope that’s really what it is and not whatever it was that happened to Joey Pants in Season IV of the Sopranos!
He could also be a serial prosecutor–you never know about these things.
I was not intending to slight the good Mr. Guerra as ‘lunatic,’ by the way. I was making an admittedly dimly-lit connection to his apparent inability to attend court and how that sort of stuff just happens in Texas, usually at the hands of others…
Yes. We felt it last spring too in a very personal way through the taxes on our 401K withddrawal. It’s either spend it yourself and pay the price, or wait for the other stock market shoe to drop and lose it all.
Will we yet see tyranny and in what form? Will foreign countries end up owning all american stock and real estate? Or…was the tyranny caused by Cheney? I will join you at the watershed if the answer is a solid yes. And mea culpa for Guerra if he really turns out to be an angel.
Gardener:
I wonder whether or not this sense of unease is attributable to the Pluto in Capricorn shit hammer that’s about to fall on us next week? Anybody out there have any clues?
Ha ha. Maybe we are all a little crazy right now – I can think of a few people I would like to hurt too. Like Mystes said, things are weird. I’ve been real uneasy the last few days. I am more worried about the automotive industry too. We could go into a full-blown depression just like that if something doesn’t change. On the one hand, I’m thinking ‘what credit crisis?’ How can it be bad for people to stop buying on credit? On the other hand, we could see starvation within a few years, for the first time since the pilgrims landed. People in the USA do not know self-sufficiency.
But in the meantime, I still send everyone to http://www.moneysavingmom.com for the best budget and food tips; and http://www.5dollardinners.com/ for budget gluten free meal ideas. Neither website is vegetarian but $5 dollar dinners uses a lot of healthy/organic foods and the blog owner tells you where and when to find the best food deals.
Well anyway, my mom always said I must have starved to death in my last life because I’m so obsessed about having enough food.
Gardener/shanna:
Is it wrong of me to want to watch Rove and Cheney get waterboarded? Is this a sign of Stockholm Syndrome?
oops – my bad! You are a lovely lady. I was thinking about my psycho brother so that Tony Soprano opposition explains everything!
With Uranus about station direct, I don’t expect this story to settle down anytime soon. Should be a lively plot.
Gardener/Brendan:
I am 53 and my Jupiter is in Cancer. However, I would be willing to guess that whatever is going with Mr. Guerra has something to do with Saturn opposite the sign of Tony Soprano!!
Well….he’s 53 years old? All the 53 year olds I know just like to hear themselves talk and make near pointless arguments. He’s gotta be a Jupiter in Gemini. In fact, he sounds like Robespierre. We will yet see a wave of ironic tyranny in the USA.
Truly strange events down there, but then it *is* Texas. The more I hear about Texas and Texans (full disclosure: been there, all too briefly, and have worked with a lot of Texans in the past) the more diversely lunatic it appears to be.