IS JUDGE NELSON ASKING AN EYE FOR AN EYE?

By Juan Montoya

If our sources are right (and they usually are), we understand that Judge Arturo Cisneros Nelson will order that the county pay for a costly retinal procedure for convicted child murderer John Allen Rubio.

Apparently, Rubio has developed problems with his retina and petitioned the court to provide the medical procedure to have it corrected.

The cost for the procedure is estimated by some county insiders to be somewhere around $100,000.

"I guess Rubio wants to correct his eyesight before he gets executed," one said.

The tab for the retrial of baby murderer Rubio is past $226,000 and rising.
Add that to the cost of the first trial, and it becomes clear that the case will continue to drain Cameron County's indigent defense fund.
The tab for Rubio's first trial in 2003 has not been released by the Cameron County Auditor's Office, but if this latest retrial is any indication, the use of expert witnesses, defense attorneys, and other miscellaneous costs will push it way past the $500,000 mark.

Rubio, a Porter High School graduate, was found guilty November 2003 on three counts of capital murder in the deaths of his children Julissa Quesada, 3, John E. Rubio, 14 months, and Mary Jane Rubio, 2.

His attorneys Ed Stapleton and Nat Lopez have been the beneficiaries of the county's generosity with their fees approaching $100,000 each. In his appeal of the conviction on his first trial, Rubio claimed that he had not been allowed to question his accuser after his wife (also charged in the case) testified in court.
Given the fact that the state is seeking a capital murder conviction, the county is under obligation to provide Rubio's defense attorneys with the experts, lab work, psychiatrists, etc., as they might deem necessary.

"Now Nelson wants him to get his eyes fixed," groused a county employee. "What next, plastic surgery?"