BPD PROBES CHILD-BRIDE WEDDING WAIVER ERIN SOLD COUPLE

By Juan Montoya
The case involving a girl who had just turned 16 on the same day her 21-year-old groom and her mother showed up at JP 2-2 Erin Garcia-Hernandez's office and bought a waiver to forgo the state-mandated 72-hour waiting period has come under the scrutiny of the Brownsville Police Department.
Sources say that a report was filed on the case after it became public knowledge.
And as more facts emerge on this case, it has become apparent that someone should have been the red flags in the issuance of the waiver to the couple.
To begin with, the parental consent form signed by the girl's mother did not have any of the boxes checked asking whether there was a pregnancy involved or whether the girls' father had been contacted and given notice of the impending marriage of his daughter. All the form had, according to witnesses who have seen it, is the signature of the 41-year-old mother on the bottom.
And even now, as more cases emerge where Garcia-Hernandez issued waivers (for a $40 fee), no one can cite the Family Code section that allows JPs have the authority to issue the waivers. In fact, the evolution of the 72-hour waivers indicates that it was exactly for that purpose – to prevent JPS from fighting over the marriage fee (in this case $250) – that the legislation specifically left out JPs among those courts that can issue the waivers.
In any even, observers say that the age of the bride should have raised a red flag.
She turned 16 on the same day that her 21-year-old boyfriend and mother took her to the Cameron County Clerk's Office to get a marriage license.
The "mother" made like she filled out the parental consent form at the county clerk's office, signed on the bottom and they went out the door.
They didn't take the girl far. They just simply went just next door to the Justice of the Peace 2-2- office.
Even though the marriage license states that unless one of the couple is in the military, or working for the government they must wait for 72 hours before they can have the wedding ceremony performed by a judge, priest or rabbi, they were able to get married.
How?
Erin Garcia-Hernandez sold them the "waiver" for the 72-hour waiting period and less than half an hour after Joe Rivera's office issued the license, she presided over the ceremony that made them husband and wife.
In fact, between the issuance of the license to marry (1:58 p.m. and the time the ceremony was recorded (2:23 p.m.) on the same day, it was only 21 minutes – less than a half hour later!
What was the hurry?
Had the judge not issued the waiver for the 72-hour waiting period, might she have discovered that perhaps there was an active case by Child Protective Services against the groom who was under  investigation for sexual assault of a child?
And law enforcement might have told her that the groom had just recently been released from the Texas Department of Corrections after serving three years for a possession of marijuana conviction.
She also might have looked into the role of the mother.
Was she in any way facilitating any criminal sexual assault crime that might have been occurring and it would have been to her and to the groom's benefit that they be married as soon as possible?
The State Penal Code states that sexual activity between any person under 17 with any person three years older constitutes a sexual assault. In this case, the woman might have been intimate with the groom before she reached the age of 16 and he was 21, a full five years older and withing the parameters of the criminal sexual charge.
As an officer of the court, it was JP Garcia-Hernandez's responsibility to report any suspicion she might have had of criminal sexual crimes even it it meant forgoing her $250 fee for the ceremony.
Instead, 21 minutes after they got to her window, she granted them a "waiver" for the 72-hour waiting period for which her court has no jurisdiction, married them, collected her $250 plus $40 for the fake "waiver" and sent them away, the girl to a future only God can know.
Additionally, she bypassed the established process to file an application for a "waiver" with a district court and with the Cameron County District Clerk and then pay the $237 filing fee as is required by law. Her in-house "waiver" bypassed the process.
Could the groom have been advised by some lawyer that under state law the defense to criminal sexual assault of a child is that the perpetrator be married to the potential victim?
Sources tell El Rrun-Rrun that after the ceremony, the groom went directly to the authorities and presented them with proof that he was married to the girl.
In her haste to grab the $250 for the marriage ceremony and the additional $40 for the bogus "waiver" of the 72-hour waiting period, did JP Garcia-Hernandez unwittingly shield a sexual predator?
Sources tell El Rrun-Rrun that after the ceremony, the groom went directly to the authorities and presented them with proof that he was married to the girl.
If any of these questions turn out to be fact, the next step in the process is for the BPD investigators to turn over their findings to the Cameron County District Attorney's Office.