AT SAENZ'S D.A. OFFICE: IT'S WHO YOU KNOW

By Juan Montoya
Remember the brother and sister who were drunk and ran over a man walking on the side of Southbound Expressway 77 in Brownsville on Sept. 9, 2013?
Police charged siblings Kacie and Victor Garcia with leaving the site of the accident after striking 21-year-old Gilbert Perez and fleeing the scene of the accident leaving him critically injured on the side of the road.
The man Gilbert spent weeks in the Intensive Care Unit at Valley Regional Medical Center in
Brownsville with broken legs, a ruptured liver, swollen brain and injured spinal cord.
After six weeks, he was still hospitalized and doctors had to implant three rods to allow him use of his crushed legs.
The victim was on life support systems and had to nuse machines to help hium breathe.
Victor Garcia was accused of hitting the alleged victim who was walking along the 1100 block of Southbound Expressway 77.
Kacie is accused of switching seats with her brother after the hit and run so he wouldn't go to jail.
Brownsville police say they were both drunk.
Interviews with Gilbert Perez and his sister Jessica while he was in the hospital indicate that they were angry at the Garcia siblings.
"They should have just stopped," said Esther. "They could have called the ambulance or the police and it would have been better for them but they took off and they left him there like a dog."
"It's unhuman-like and it just hurts," Gilbert told a broadcaster in his first interview since the accident. "I don't know how they could just leave me there."
Perez said he had hoped to work in the oil fields one day. After the accident, he said he was just glad to be alive.
"First thing I thought was that he was dead," Jessica Herrera said.
Kacie, who worked as a Cameron County jailer, was kept on by Sheriff Omar Lucio until she went to trial.
Utlimately, the Cameron County District Attorney's Office charged Kacie with three counts: Driving While Intoxicated, a Class B Misdemeanor, Accident Involving Ijury or Death, a Third Degree Felony, and Intoxicaion Assault With a Motor Vehicle, also a Third Degree Felony.
Victor Garcia was charged Failre to Report Felony Where Severe Bodily Injury or Death Results, a Class A Misdemeanor, And Accident Involving Injury or Death, also a third-degree felony.
One would expect that the Garcias would be facing a long time behind bars for their actions. But then again, we're in Cameron County and things don;t always work out to expectations.
D.A. Luis Saenz appointed Edmund K. Cyganewicz as a special prosecutor in the case.
Ed. Stapleton defended Victor while Noe Garza and Angela Nix defended Kacie.
The cases never went to a jury because their defense attorneys worked out a deal with the DA's Office. Originally, the case was to be heard by 103rd District Judge Janet Leal, but she recused herself and visiting Judge Romeo Flores heard the case. Leal was Saenz's partner in their law firm along with Chester Gonzalez.
In Kacie's case, the DWI and the  Intoxicaion Assault With a Motor Vehicle were dismissed as paret of the plea bargain agreement. She pleaded guilty to the felony charge of Accident Involving Injury or Death.
The DA's office (Special Prosecutor Cyganewicz) agreed to the dismissal of the two charges and to have Flores sentence her to five years probation and to apply deferred adjudication after that so that the offense would not show up on her record.
In her brother Victor's case, the crackerjack defense also garnered him a dismissal (also with Special Prosecutor Cyganewicz's agreement) on the Accident Involving Injury or Death felony charge and his nolo contendre guilty plea on the  Failre to Report Felony Where Severe Bodily Injury or Death Results resulted in Flores going along the agreement between the DA's Office and Stapleton and assessed him 12 months probation and 24 hours of community service. The court also went along with placing Victor with deferred adjudication so that after he served his probation, the record of the offense would be erased.
Saenz had been saying loud and often that he would not go along with defered adjudication in cases where civtims were injured or proerpty was damaged. With Cyganewicz as special prosecutor, he washed his hands of the case and could issue a plausible denial that he had nothing to do with the outcome.
And just why did Saenz assign a special prosecutor to the Garcia siblings case?
It turns out he is their uncle.
Saenz is married to the former Delia Gonzalez, sister of the the siblings' mother, Diana Gonzaalez. Delia and Diana are the nieces of former Cameron County District Clerk Aurora de la Garza (nee Gonzalez).
Even the attorneys involved have a link to Saenz. Both Angela Nix and Ed Stapleton supported Saenz in his capaign for DA and both complained that their name was put on a so-called "blacklist" by former DA Armando Villalobos.
Attorney Moises Salas, Nat Perez, Nix and Star Jones filed a request before U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen in 2010 asking him to issue a restraining order against Villalobos charging that he placed them and six (including Ed Stapleton) others on the "blacklist” where their clients can’t get probation or plea bargains. All supported Saenz in his campaign.
And that, children, is the way that justice works in Cameron County. It really is who you know, isn't it?