TRUE TO PRINCIPLE, GUERRA GOES AFTER SEN. LUCIO

By Juan Montoya
If anything, his supporters and detractors both agree, former Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra has been true to his principles.
He was true to them when he convinced a grand jury to indict everyone from the private contractors to the vice-president and attorney general of the United States for the lax security and cutting corners on basic services that led to the death of an inmate at the private for-profit prisons built in his county. Dick Chaney was a major stockholder in prison-related businesses, including the Vanguard Group, which has an interest in privately-run federal jails in the region.
Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General, was accused of using his position to "stop the investigations as to the wrong doings" in county prisons.
His lawsuit was prescient in that the same concerns for security and cutting corners are blamed for the recent prisoner riots there that resulted in the total destruction of the jails and adverse economic impact on the county.  

He was also true to his principles when he sued state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. alleging corruption and conspiracy over what Guerra said was the closing of a county road and a bridge over a resaca near the senator’s home.
The lawsuit, filed in 2012 in 197th state District Court, alleges Lucio engaged in a conspiracy to convert a public road into a private one leading to his property in the San Carlos Estates subdivision.
It was the latter litigation that has wended its way through local courts and was heard Tuesday by visiting judge Noe Gonzalez.
Gonzalez heard Lucio's attorneys Norton Colvin and Victor Rodriguez argue that Garza's lawsuit be summarily dismissed because the former DA had no standing and because the senator had acquired the right to take over the road easement when he acquired a conveyance of the right-of-way from the landowner. Earlier, Lucio had sought to have the easement declared abandoned, but acquired the conveyance instead.
Guerra argued that the road and a bridge over the San Carlos Resaca had become a public facilities after the county had maintained them for more than 10 years under the prescriptive easement requirements of the Texas Government Code.
However, he could produce no documentation for the court showing where the county had accepted the road as a dedicated easement under the statute.
Judge Gonzalez took both counsel's assertions under advisement and directed Guerra to seek a party who had standing (a landowner affected by the closing) and gave him 30 days to produce the party in court. Guerra had sought to introduce affidavits from neighboring property owners past the Lucio property who claimed Lucio's construction of a gate and closing of the road prevented them from reaching their property north on San Carlos Road.
As early as July 2002, six months after Texas State Senator Eddie Lucio and his wife Herminia bought block 14 and 15 of San Carlos Estates Subdivision in Cameron County, David Garza, Pct. 3  county commissioner inquired of the engineering department why he had fenced off a publicly-dedicated easement and built his driveway and house there.
Ten years after there was no resolution to the easement-invading issue by county authorities,  Guerra filed the lawsuit in district court challenging the Lucios' right to close the bridge to public traffic and building their home over the easement.
In a startling development, Lucio – through the law firm of Colvin, Chaney, Saenz and Rodriguez – claimed Lucio was "entitled to governmental, qualified and/or official immunity" because of his status as a state senator.In other words, Lucio, because of his ;public office, asserted he is immune from the lawsuit and can claim a waiver to the charges brought in Guerra's lawsuit.
That road is called San Carlos Road, a thoroughfare that starts at Highway 100 and runs north to south and forks when it meets Resaca de Los Cuates. The left section follows the resaca and crosses at a bridge further north to meet Iowa Gardens Road in the north. The right fork crosses over the resaca and is supposed to continue north and meet with Iowa Gardens. It is this fork that has been the source of contention since Lucio built a gate across it and his home across the resaca, effectively blocking off public traffic and invading the easement.(Click on top graphic to enlarge)
In the Google Earth image at right, the right fork ends abruptly at Lucio's driveway after the resaca bridge is crossed.
On April 4, 2002 County Right-of-Way Clerk Richard Walker wrote a memo to his boss County Engineer Juan Bernal and told him he had met with Lucio who was in the "process of developing and improving his property" and had fenced off the bridge and roadway. Walker wrote Bernal that Lucio had inquired on how to seek an abandonment of the easement but had not returned to follow through. Instead, he proceeded to fence the area off to the public and take over the easement.
Others had inquired on whether Lucio could do as he did.
On June 2002, correspondence between county officials attached to Guerra's lawsuit indicate that Walker responded to San Carlos Road resident Chris Korab who had asked about the fencing off of the right-of-way. Walker responded to Korab under the heading of "unnamed" road located within San Carlos Subdivision. Suddenly, Guerra claims, the road had been stripped of its name and was now merely an "unnamed road" in furtherance of the scheme to allow Lucio to invade the dedicated road easement. That, he charged, constituted a conspiracy by county officials to allow another to appropriate a public thoroughfare for private use.
On July 2002, Harlingen resident Lizzy Wilkerson contacted Pct. 3 commissioner David Garza and said that she was concerned that because of Lucio's fencing off of the public easement "she cannot enter onto the publicly dedicated access road that runs through the adjacent owner's property. She claims that public access has been blocked off to the public."
Garza contacted Bernal inquiring to see whether the public's access to the easement had been blocked. There is no answer to his query on the record on the issue, although records indicate that Walker met with his staff and then-County Judge Gilbert Hinojosa later that year, on Oct. 7, 2002, and discussed the matter.
Then, on April 2012, attorney Guerra filed a lawsuit in the 107th District Court using a Civil RICO action and charging that Lucio – aided by county officials – conspired to appropriate land and public resources. He included, along with Lucio, the county's tax assessor-collector, the Water and Control District #6, the county Engineering Dept., and ROW clerk Walker.
Guerra charged in his lawsuit that when the Lucios bought the property they accepted the "exceptions and conveyances and warranties" that included the "reservation and dedication of said subdivision recorded in Volume 8, Page 37 Map records of Cameron County Texas for roadways, pipelines, utilities, irrigation facilities, railroad and other purposes rights, rules and regulations law in favor of Cameron County Water and Control District # 6."
"Soon thereafter (Eddie Lucio) gated and fenced the property with little regard for the easement and private road restrictions that are attached to the property."
In particular, Guerra charged that the Lucios ignored the "40-foot easement that bridges the resaca and bisects Lot 15, followed by a 20-foot private drive bisections lots 111, 110, and 109. This easement and private drive starts and ends on San Carlos Road Blvd. and allows the future owners to have legal access to their property and this cannot be changed or altered."
If in a month from now Guerra is unable to find an affected landowner willing to challenge Lucio's claims, the issue might be moot.
"He is claiming that because he is a state senator he can do as he pleases because he is immune," Guerra said. "I have never heard of such a defense except when you're on the floor of the senate or get a speeding ticket going on your way to attend a session."