IS ERASMO CASTROS' CANDIDACY DOOMED BY TEXAS LAW? OPPONENTS SAY FELONY CONVICTION MAKES HIM INELIGIBLE

(When someone decides to run for public office and asks the voters for their trust and to entrust them with authority and influence over public policy and finances, having the public scrutinize one's past is part and parcel of the social contract. We had been hearing that some opponents of mayoral candidate Erasmo Castro have been questioning his eligibility to run for office as a result of a felony conviction for forgery and that the assessment  by a local judge of deferred adjudication after he had sentenced him to five-years probation may have been illegal. We also hear that in case Castro eventually wins in the race, his ability to take office will be challenged in court. We examine the matter here.)

By Juan Montoya
On January 12, 1994, Erasmo Castro was indicted by a Cameron County grand jury on a charge of forgery.
The charge involved a friend signing over a car to keep it from going to his wife in a divorce and then Castro forging a Brownsville Police Department officer signature to have it released to him from the Cardenas Motor impound lot after it had been seized by police.
According to the docket sheet, Castro waived a jury trial and was convicted in a bench trial and – after a pre-sentence investigation report was considered by the court – sentenced on April 28, 1994 to 10 years in the Texas Department of Corrections probated to five years by Judge Robert Garza in the 138th District Court with the usual number of restrictions, fines and court costs.
On May 13, 1994 – barely over two weeks after he was sentenced – his lawyer Angel Castro filed a petition in Garza's court asking that the judge reconsider the sentence and grant Castro deferred adjudication.
On June 3, Garza heard the motion, denied the state's objection (by then-Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz) to reconsider the sentence and grant deferred adjudication – and signed Castro's petition on June 22 with the same conditions of probation for five years. After that, Castro's conviction would be erased from his record and his full rights restored, including running for office.
The deferred adjudication order included the former restrictions and fines such as pay a fine of $1,000 in equal monthly installments, pay $500 in restitution to Petra Mancillas (the owner of the car) at $10 per month, court costs at $10 per month, $25 in monthly probation fees, a one-time $50 CrimeStoppers fee within six months, $350 for the pre-sentence investigation, at $10 a month, and 350 hours of community service.
On June 15, Garza signed the order denying the DA's objections. On June 22, he signed the order for deferred adjudication.
Castro asked and was allowed his request that his probation be removed to Titus County ( Mt. Pleasant, Texas). If he satisfied all the requirements of Garza's assessed five-year probationary period, the sentence would be deferred.
Then a flurry of events occurred. The state filed a Motion for Adjudication of Guilt against Castro and the Garza ordered both the state and the defendant to a hearing to show cause for the motion on March 22, 1999.
On March 11, 11 days before the hearing where the state's motion to Adjudicate Guilt was to be heard, an assistant district attorney wrote the court that Castro "has violated the conditions of said probation since it was granted"...and was in arrears $581.38 of the $1,000 fine, $875 of the $1,500 probation fees, $310 of the $500 in restitution to the victim, and $85 on the $350 pre-sentence investigation fee.
The Asst. DA also wrote the court that he had performed only 214 of the court-ordered 350 hours of community service.
She asked that the court to revoke his probation.
When Castro failed to appear Garza ordered that a warrant for his arrest be issued and that a $500,000 bond be placed upon him at the time of his arrest.
The docket's next entry appears on February 7, 2008 – eight years later – when now-138th District Judge Arturo Nelson  issued an order to the state to show cause why the case should not be dismissed for want of prosecution and set the date of the hearing for March 12, 2008.
On March 3, 2008, Delia Fierro, a community supervision officer, wrote Nelson that Titus County had accepted Castro for supervision on November 14,1994 and that he was employed, sending payments and complying with his probation. However, Fierro wrote, on Aug. 16, 1995, "he was charged with fraud, a charge that was later dropped."
She also said that a TCIC/NCIC record check on September 2007, revealed that the defendant "has been arrested five (5) other times. He was charged with thee (3) times with Theft by Check, of which two counts were dismissed, and on the third he was convicted of two (2) counts and ordered to pay $167 and $204 in court costs; and restitution in the amount os $23.31 and $47.43. On October 19, 1997, he was arrested and charged with Hindering Secured Creditors in Mount Pleasant, Texas. These charges were later dismissed. On May 29, he was arrested by the Camp County Sheriff's Office and charged with Forgery; these charges were dismissed on April 12, 2007.
"On September 22, 1998, courtesy supervision was rejected by Titus County, after the defendant failed to report April, July, August, and September, 1988. The defendant's whereabouts shave been unknown since then. Attempts have been made to contact defendant at the last known address, to no avail."
The docket indicates that the hearing was reset for March 28 when the state's Motion to Adjudicate was dismissed with no objection from the  the DA's office headed by Armando Villalobos and the warrant was recalled. The motion from the state for an Order Unsatisfactorily Discharging Defendant From Probation was denied and signed by Nelson on March 22, 2008 and the case was closed.
You'd think that was the end of that, but in light of Castro's candidacy for mayor of the City of Brownsville, his opponents are saying that Garza erred in reconsidering Castro's sentence and granting deferred adjudication since the court had no further jurisdiction on his case. They claim that Garza could no longer correct the sentence because "A trial court has inherent power to correct, modify, vacate, or amend its own rulings, and, as long as it does not by its ruling divest itself of
jurisdiction or exceed a statutory time limit, it can simply change its mind on a ruling."
An appeals court in Riles v. State, 216 S.W.3d 836 (2006), quotes precedent that a court is within its authority to change a sentence authority "only a few moments after it had initially sentenced
defendant and before it had adjourned for day," not two weeks later. Castro, his oponents say, could have moved for a new trial or appealed his conviction.
That time limit to have changed the sentence  they say, was on the same day before it adjourned for the day. Since Garza changed the sentence more than two weeks after he had rendered it, they claim the court had lost jurisdiction and makes the reconsideration illegal and Castro's felony conviction stands.
That, they say, plus the fact that he did not satisfy the requirements of his probation, makes him ineligible to hold public office under the Texas Election code states that a person can hold public office only if  they "have not been finally convicted of a felony from which the person has not been pardoned or otherwise released from the resulting disabilities."
Not too many political observers think that Castro will prevail in the election. But will it ultimately take a court to decide the legitimacy of his candidacy or his ability to take office?