DID LEGALLY-CHALLENGED ERIN ATTEND JP INTRO CLASSES?

By Juan Montoya
Depite the lame protestations of JP 2-2 Erin Garcia-Hernandez that there is a "gray area" in the law that mighta, coulda, just maybe shoulda, allowed her to issue (and sell) waivers to the state's 72-hour mandated waiting period between the issuance of a marriage license and the performance of the ceremony, new JPs who attended the mandatory May 17 course say it was made quite clear.
"That was specifically touched upon," said none who requested anonymity to comment on her colleague's assertion that it was vague. "They went over the history of how the legislation evolved to prevent urban and rural JPs fighting over the marriage ceremony fees."
That appears to be common knowledge in Cameron County, where no other judges have issued a waiver document save the office of Garcia-Hernandez.

The lone surviving document (of about 13 confirmed ones) was issued to a couple who then paid her somewhere between $25 to $40 and then the marriage ceremony fees (between $150 to $250 according to different sources) immediately after the waiver was signed by Garcia-Hernandez.
The moolah, apparently, was too enticing to let some piddling reason like the law get in the way of making a few extra bucks, apparently. But people were watching. In fact, right next door, the clerks and assistants of JP 2-1 Linda Salazar – herself no lightweight in marriage ceremony numbers – were watching all this with growing anger.
"They saw that Linda's clients were being courted right off the corridor leading to her office," said a county employee. "They not only told them that they could do the same thing that Salazar could, but they could do it right away instead of waiting for the 72 hour period to pass."
Now, some loose tongues are saying that Salazar and other JPs, instead of issuing the waivers, would simply post-date the wedding ceremony and perform it (and charge, of course) and send the soon-to-be-married couple on their merry way.
Whatever the method that was used, it was Garcia-Hernandez who pushed the envelope with her office-manufactured waivers to snag the clients.
The JP who attended the introductory course with Erin and others said that there was no question that JPs cannot issue the waivers, much less sell them. That was on  May 17.
The record shows that not only did Garcia-Hernandez issue them before the 80 hours of "judicial education," but that she continued on after wards. For example:
*On May 3 she married a couple who did not fit the waiver requirements. They had acquired their license to marry at 12:37 p.m. Erin married them at 1:15 p.m. They were not military or had been living with each other.
*On May 9 she married a couple who did not fit the waiver requirements. They had acquired their license to marry at 1:52 a.m. Erin married them at 2:30 a.m. They were not military or had been living with each other.
*On May 28 she married a couple who did not fit the waiver requirements. They had acquired their license to marry at 12:40 p.m. Erin married them at 1 p.m. They were not military or had been living with each other.
*On June 10 she married a couple who did not fit the waiver requirements. They had acquired their license to marry at 2:42 p.m. Erin married them at 3:20 p.m. They were not military or had been living with each other.
When Garcia-Hernandez came back home, she continued to issue them right up to the time the scheme was discovered in September.
Then, when her office was informed that new rules had been drafted by the legislature concerning issuance of marriage licenses by the county clerks, she sought to fudge the issue by replying to the clerks at that office whether that meant that she could no longer issue waivers.
There was never any mention of waivers in the original email from the county clerk's office, said an office staffer.
"This came out of left field," said a worker there. "In fact, the workers at the office who filed the documentation on weddings and licenses didn't know what to do with her waivers since no other JPs in the county were issuing them, just her. They just threw them in the round file (the trash)."
The mention of waivers in Garcia-Hernandez's reply to the email was an obvious (and clumsy) attempt to cover up the issuance and sale of illegal waivers. That she directed her employees to manufacture a form (tampering with a government document, sounds familiar?), sold them, and pocketed the money is not in dispute. And no one, except for Garcia-Hernandez, disputes that JPs are not authorized to issue the waivers.

The Texas Penal Code speaks to that as well. In Section 37.10 (Tampering with Governmental Record), (a) 2 states: A person commits an offense if he:
(2) makes, presents, or uses any record, document, or thing with knowledge of its falsity and with intent that it be taken as a genuine governmental record.
Then, it states two lines later:
(4) possesses, sells, or offers to sell a governmental record or blank governmental record form with intent that it be used unlawfully;
(5) makes, presents, or uses a governmental record with knowledge of its falsity; or
(6) possesses, sells, or offers to sell a governmental record or blank document record form with knowledge that it was obtained unlawfully.
The Penal Code states that "if the actor's intent is to defraud another, ...the offense is a state jail felony.
The offense becomes a felony of the third degree if "the actor's intent in committing the offense was to defraud or harm another."
And yet, this JP with "legal experience you deserve" is pinning all her reputation and bid for reelection on this slim hook on this frail limb, in this "gray" area the law.
Come March 4, we'll see whether the voters in the JP 2-2 district are as gullible as she thinks they are when they go to the polls.