SHAKEUP AT DAS OFFICE: THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING; STONEWALL SANDOVAL NOW FIRST ASSISTANT TO DA SAENZ By Juan Montoya Our request to the Cameron County District Attorney was simple: Tell us if you have sold any of the eight-liners confiscated by your office, who you sold them to, and how much did you get in return? Or, formally: Please consider this an open records request by the Texas Open Records Act. I am requesting any and all documents containing information concerning the sale or transfer of 8 liner machines or other gambling devices which have been seized by the Cameron County District Attorney office during Operation Bishop from January 1,2013 to present. Please include name and address of buyer and price paid to this office. That seemed – to us, anyway – a pretty straightforward request. But just in case that our email would be swallowed by cyberdemons or the like, we sent three identical requests to D.A. Luis Saenz, Melissa Landin (Zamora), and Asst. DA Matthew Kendall. We thought the item was newsworthy because Saenz had told more than one media organ that he would not do what his predecessor – convicted former DA Armando Villalobos – had done: sell the confiscated machines and use the funds to reward his favored employees with salary supplements from the forfeitures. Heres the link: m.brownsvilleherald/news/local/article_18c67c06-a4ac-11e2-aa5a-0019bb30f31a.html?mode=jqm In fact, Saenz was very specific (Oh, how we hate that word and youll see why a little further down). Was Luis keeping his word? On the very 10th day after our request was made, we received an email from one Edward Adrian Sandoval, an Asst. DA we had never heard about informing us that he would be handling our request, but that he needed a mailing address so that he could communicate with us. Why, we wondered, did he require a mailing address if one had never been needed in the past? In other words, why snail-mail instead of email? Now, we had been told by previously reliable sources in that office that the dragging out of the response of our info request was just a ploy to stretch out the process and stonewall us to the point of fatigue so that we would just tire of the game and go away. With the additional delay attributed to the holidays, we would be told, they said, that our request was vague, not specific, and ambiguous. Well, Goooolly, as Gomer Pyle used to say, they were right on the mark. This Sandoval finally emailed us the letter which said that no responsive documents can be tendered at this time as your request is (ready?) ambiguous. And, predictably, Sandoval goes on into saying that although the DAs office spearheaded (his words, not mine) Operation Bishop, various different local law enforcement agencies have participated in the operation, made arrests, and seized contraband...The DAs Office has only effectuated some of the seizures. Under a plain reading of your request, it would seem you seek information /material of those seizures done by the DAs Office investigators, Sandoval wrote. Since we referred to Operation Bishop, he continued, it would appear to him that we were seeking information relating to the entirety of the seizures performed under Operation Bishop. So be specific, he hints, and clarify your request. OK. We know a stonewall when we see one, and this is a good one. Sandoval wants us to specify what specific machines (sweepstakes, eight-liners, computers, etc.) seized during which specific raid, on what specific date, and from what specific establishment, and by what specific law enforcement entity we are referring to. In other words, a snipe hunt. Look, what we want to know is did you sell any of the machines that you seized from gambling parlors here to someone else elsewhere so they could them to work just as they were before you seized them? And what did you do with the money? And how does this square with published statements attributed to the DAs Office that the machines would not be resold? We first got the lead that some machines had been resold by the Cameron County DAs Office to a buyer in Starr County and that the buyer had put them to work doing exactly what they had been doing in Cameron County. We also spoke with a former DAs Office employee who said he had personal knowledge of the buyer and the profit made by the DAs Office on the sale. We will try to be meticulous about specifying in the modified information request which is now being prepared by our crack legal staff. But for now, we wonder who this Sandoval is and how he has emerged as the DAs point man on this matter. We looked and found out our Mr. Sandoval is a Saenz look alike clone (moustache and all) on a meteoric rise in that office. We thought that our old friend Rene Gonzalez was the DAs First Assistant, but we were told that was no longer the fact. Gonzalez is no longer the First Assistant at the D.A.s Office. Saenz made it known publicly that Gonzalez was not demoted; but rather, that Rene requested a transfer to another position (Appeals) within the office. Saenz appointed our Mr. Sandoval as his new First Assistant. This appointment left some employees and courthouse observers surprised/miffed. Sandoval, we have learned, has relatively little criminal trial prosecution experience. The Texas State Bar website says he has only been licensed as an attorney since 11/06/2009, a scant five years, and has been working at the D.A.’s Office for about one year. Loose tongues there tell us that they cant remember him handling a criminal jury trial. Before coming to the D.A.’s Office, Sandoval worked as a legal aid attorney, handling evictions in the local Justice of the Peace courts. Its not like Saenz didnt have plenty of other options to appoint someone else with experience. Numerous Assistant D.A.s have far greater experience than Sandoval. Peter Gilman and Gus Garza each have over 30 years experience. And Ismael Hinojosa and Adela Garza each have tried over 100 criminal trials. If experience is important in this position, how can the First Assistant provide guidance on complex criminal trials if he has no extensive experience trying a criminal case before a jury? Take this recent case, for example where Sandoval’s youth and inexperience may have already been a problem. His most recent assignment was in the civil section of that office, where he handled bail bond forfeitures and mental health commitments. During his tenure in the civil section, Sandoval mishandled one case,that resulted in a witness (and his lawyer) being falsely arrested. As a result, Sandoval and others are named as Defendants in a $1 million county civil suit (2014-DCL-8262) now pending in district court. With so many experienced attorneys, why did Saenz choose Sandoval? Some courthouse Saenz wants a yes man. Someone who will not question Sanez’ decisions when he strays off the path of good judgment. Someone who will stonewall information that may prove embarrassing Luis or his office. Sandoval, apparently, is just the man. observers believe that The saying goes that a lawyers word is his bond. Saenz made a big media splash when he vowed to end gambling and put the machines out of circulation. We want to know if he meant what he said in the quote in the graphic at right. We will probably spend months trying to winnow the information we requested from the chaff that Sandoval piles our way. But we know what we want (and so do they). So let the games begin until the truth emerges from this tussle.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 20:21:40 +0000
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