ERIN GARCIA NAMED AS BENEFICIARY OF CASE-FIXING BRIBES; RECORD SHOW SHE REVERSED AFTER VILLALOBOS INTERVENED

By Juan Montoya
The same grand jury that indicted JP 2-2 Erin Hernandez Garcia's clerk Liliana Cantu last week also issued two other indictments against two defendants who made payments to Cantu for Garcia to issue favorable dispositions of pending cases.
Indictments issued by the grand jury October 22 charge that two defendants, Maria Velia Silguero and Vanessa Weaver Mercado(aka Vanessa Weaver and Vanessa Weaver Mercado), "on or about January 1, 2013, "did knowingly offer or agree to confer a benefit..., to wit, a cash payment" to Cantu for Justice of the Peace Erin Garcia as consideration for the decision...as a public servant, to wit: for a favorable decision of a pending court case."
The women were charged in connection with separate bribery indictments.
The two bribery indictments against the women are almost identical in charging that Cantu was taking the payments on behalf of Garcia Hernandez to "fix" their cases before the court.
In a previous indictment, Cantu was charged with taking a cash payment from Mercado "as consideration for a favorable decision in a judicial proceeding, to wit: pending civil court cases numbers 2013-GSC-000003 and 2013 GSC 000002.
She was also charged with tampering with government documents by making false entries for at least three defendants who were ordered by the courts to perform community service hours in lieu of payments when they did not perform them.
Garcia Hernandez is not charged as  defendant in either indictment, but is named as the beneficiary of the bribes allegedly taken by Cantu from the defendants for the justice of the peace to fix their cases.
(Click on graphic at right to enlarge.)
But as explosive as these indictments alleging she took bribes to fix cases may be, a previous indictment by the grand jury against the Mercados is even more intriguing.
Those two previous cases deal with small claims complaints filed in Garcia Hernandez's court by Jaime and Vanessa Mercado and involve (000003) claims for compensation against Gricelda Mercado Jorge Reyes, Maria de la Luz Negrete Nava for $5, 486 and against Violeta Reyes (000002) for compensation of $9,495.
Docket sheets of both cases indicate that at least one of the case files (000002) cannot be found.
The last entry in the docket sheet for other (000003) indicates that when clerks tried to find the file, they could not locate it and could only see it by asking Garcia Hernandez.
The record indicates that Garcia Hernandez had ruled in favor of the Mercados in both cases on April 3, 2013. The very next day, April 4, former Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos notified the court that he was representing the defendants in both cases and claims he did not get notification of the hearing.
In both cases, Garcia Hernandez ordered the cases dismissed the following August 27.
Villalobos was out of office and under indictment for racketeering and extortion at the time he intervened in the Mercado cases.
He was convicted by a jury on May 24, 2013, on a count of racketeering, a second count of conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and five counts of extortion. A judge sentenced him to 13 years in federal prison on February 2014.
Villalobos handled the JP cases while he waited for his trial and before he was sentenced to prison.
Why Garcia Hernandez reversed her judgements when Villalobos intervened in  both cases is unknown. And the fact that one of the plaintiffs (Vanesa Mercado) is also named as a defendant in the bribery cases may point to a complex web of competing interests in the cases.
What was the connection between Garcia Hernandez and Villalobos? And was her court so well known as a place where a little cash could "fix" the problem?
Lurking in the background is the possibility that Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz will present evidence to a grand jury on the issuing and selling by Garcia Hernandez of  waivers to the state-mandated 72-hour waiting period. A Texas Attorney General's opinion states that it was likely that a justice of the peace court does not have the authority under state law to either issue or sell the waivers.
In at least 13 cases, Garcia Hernandez sold couples the waivers and married them the same day that they received their marriage licenses. Couples paid her between $150 to $250 for her to perform the ceremony.