POETIC JUSTICE IN PENA'S ELECTION APPEAL DENIAL?

By Juan Montoya
Was the dismissal of Ruben R. Peña’s election contest against Ernie L. Hernandez Jr. for the Democratic Party’s nomination for Cameron County Pct. 2 commissioner by the 13th Court of Appeals a case of poetic justice?
Peña, who has had his own personal experience with time running out on legal proceedings in the past, apparently fell victim to the sands of time.
In the decision dismissing the appeal , the court stated that since the applications for mail-in ballots had begun Sept. 3, it would be too late for elections officials to stop the process and disrupt the elections in November.
Peña has contended in the past that he was robbed.
Although Peña came up 49 only votes behind Hernandez with 2,110 votes 2,159 votes, his main contention was that the mail-in ballots had been illegally acquired by Hernandez and his supporters.
Hernandez received 240 mail-in votes versus 34 for Peña in the runoff.
Peña had requested that the court order a new election.
Just as Peña was not favored by Father Time in this case, in the past he has been its beneficiary.
In 1997, a brouhaha ensued when a county justice of the peace issued arrest warrants against Peña that were served on him by a county constable.
Peña was placed under arrest at his office and placed in the county jail on allegations brought against him by the heirs of Rex McGarr, a wealthy farmer who had Peña prepare his will and made him its co-executor. They claimed that Peña and Robert Pedraza, their ancestor's foreman, had schemed to deplete their relative's estate though a variety of unscrupulous moves.
Only the intervention of a district judge and local legal eagle Ernesto Gamez prevented Peña from being held on a $690,000 bond set by the justice of the peace.
In the end, the court ruled that since the heirs had not filed within the time set by the statute of limitations, they had no standing to sue Peña or Pedraza.
A special prosecutor (De Witt County Assistant District Attorney Alger Kendall) was assigned to investigate allegations against Peña after then-Cameron County District Attorney Yolanda De Leon, who was once a law partner of Peña’s, took her office out of the investigation.
Kendall, on the stand during a misconduct hearing for the justice of the peace who issued the arrest warrants against Peña, told the court “that Peña escaped indictment on misapplication of trust and other charges brought against him by the heirs because the statute of limitations had run out on the allegations against Peña.”
Time, then, was on his side, unlike this latest episode.