Ashlie Hardway Testifies the Law is Irrelevant and Puts KVIA in Harms Way

Ashlie Hardway is a reporter for channel 7, KVIA news, an ABC affiliate. As Americans, we have been taught to rely on the press for information. We have been taught that the press is the "Fourth Estate" and that it willl act as a watchdog on the government. We have been told that the members of the press will set aside their personal animosity and bias when reporting the news. The news stations in turn go to the government, specifically the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and apply for licenses to operate on the airwaves. Because these licenses are limited due to limited space, stations have to prove that they are doing a public service in order to obtain or maintain their licenses. Is KVIA doing a public service and informing the public of the truth when it employs a reporter who falsely accuses a citizen with a squeaky clean record of violating a law that she cannot violate? That citizen violating the law is a legal impossibility. Ashlie Hardway did all this in the MIDDLE of Early voting, days before the primary day, March 4, 2008 when I was running for the office of District Attorney.

Ashlie Hardway accused me on tv of being a criminal. She said that I could be prosecuted for violating the Texas expunction law for disseminating SISD coach Alberto Ocegueda's arrest records of aggravated sexual assault of a child. I told her that I did not know anything about an expunction order, that I had never been served with an expunction order and not being a government actor am not subject to such an order. Hardway preferred to run with the story Ocegueda's attorney Joe Spencer handed to her anyway, even though she had no proof that I had ever been served with an expunction order. What makes Hardway's actions more deplorable is that Hardway testified on August 13, 2008, that she had READ the expunction statute and she even held it up on TV for her viewers to see. What Hardway failed to tell her viewers was that the expunction petition and order Ocegueda had given her to do her story COULD NOT HAVE BEEN legally granted. Here is what Art 55.01 (Expunction statute) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure says:

"A person who has been placed under a custodial or non-custodial arrest for commission of either a felony or misdemeanor is entitled to have all records and files relating to the arrest expunged if:

(A) an indictment or information charging the person with commission of a felony has not been presented against the person for an offense arising out of the transaction for which the person was arrested or, if an idictment or information charging the person with commission of a felony was presented...and the limitations period expired before the date on which a petition for expunction was filed under Article 55.02;

Hardway knew from her own story that the "Special Prosecutor" Chris Bradley did not take the case before a grand jury and therefore there was no indictment and no information (Bradley said she had declined the case). This means then under the above law, that Ocegueda would have to wait for the limitations to pass before he could file for an expunction (32 years in this case). Ocegueda filed for and obtained an expunction in less than two years. This isn't even the limitations for a misdemeanor. Anyone else in this town woud have had to have waited 32 years. Can we say "special treatment?"

It was ASTOUNDING to me that Ashlie Hardway and Channel 7 did not report that Alberto Ocegueda could never have gotten his records legally expunged just by using the information they provided in THEIR OWN REPORT. Their story should have been about how the expunction was illegal, another example of my campaign platform: District Attorney Jaime Esparza's friends get special treatment under the law that no else gets!

Here are some verbatim excerpts from the transcript of the August 13, 2008 hearing where a judge agreed that the expunction was a "legal malady" and ordered it vacated as being a void order. Ashlie Hardway testified at that hearing. I am doing the questioning.

Q. Ms. Hardway, did you not in your report say that I could be prosecuted for publishing expunged records?
A. Yes.
Q. Have you looked at the expungement law?
A. I did at the time. I don't recall exactly what it says.
Q. Have you been shown any evidence that I have been served with an expunction order?
A. No.
Q. Okay. Have you ever been served with an expungement order?
A. No.
Q. Okay. And how do you know that these records are expunged?
A. I received a copy of--I beleive it was Mr. Spencer's, after the fact, a motion or something he has filed that he requested this case be expunged. And I received a copy after the fact saying, yes, these were indeed expunged.
Q. Okay. And did you look at the petition Mr. Spencer sent you?
A. Yes.
...
Q. Are you aware that the statute of limitations for sexual assault is 20 years after the child turns 18, or life, depending on what year the offense had been committed?"
A. No
Q. And you didn't cover any of that in your reports either, did you?
A. It wasn't relevant to my report at the time. The report was about the document that was published.
Q. You didn't cover any of that in your report?
A. No, because it was not relevant.

Hardway testifies under oath that the expunction law that she is accusing me of violating, "..was not relevant" to her report. Why wasn't her report that the expungement law would not permit Mr. Ocegueda's expungement? Under the expungement law, Ocegueda and his attorney could not even FILE their petition until 32 years after his arrest. (Find out later about the judge who signed the order granting Ocegueda's petition).

What Hardway also failed to tell you is that Ocegueda's petition for expungement stated he was seeking the expungement of the arrest records of an "Ocegueda", O-C-E. What were ordered destroyed were the arrest records of "Osegeuda" O-S-E. Why did the booking records spell Ocegueda's name with and O-S? How did Ocegueda get the misspelled records purged when he failed to ask for O-S-E. If you seek the expungement of a particular name then that is all you should be able to get and not all the names that "are close in spelling to it." When I asked Ms. Hardway about the petition haveing one spelling and the destroyed records having another and if her inquiring, truth seeking mind had wondered and asked about that, here is what transpired:

Q. Have you seen the arrest records of Mr. Ocegueda? You saw my flyer?
A. Right. Yes.
Q. Do you remember that his name was O-S-E?
A. Yes.
Q. And so you would agree that the petition for expungement was to erase the records of a man who spells his name with an O-C and not an O-S?
A. Right.
Q. Did you ask anybody about that?
A. I noticed there were several documents that had his name spelled two different ways. I don't remember exactly which ones were spelled which way, but I remember there were several things--

Ms. Caballero: I'm sorry. Objection, non-repsonsive, Judge. I asked her if she asked anybody to clear that up.

A. I don't recall if I asked anyone.

Hardway doesn't report that expungement law does not permit such an expungement. She thinks it is not relevant. She thinks it is not relevant that the order she is accusing me of violating could never have been legally granted. She doesn't report that even if the order had been legally obtained the records that were expunged were not the ones they asked to be expunged.

Look for my next installment to see what else Hardway thought was irrelevant and not important. I think you will find it interesting and enlightening as to how certain members of the El Paso press function.