Yesterday, Stuart Leeds and I had an all day hearing in front of Judge Darr from Midland, Texas. Stuart Leeds and I had filed motions to recuse Judge Angie Barill of the 346th District Court due to her biased conduct. She had ordered the expungement of Alberto Ocegueda's records even though they could not be expunged for 32 years from the date of his arrest in November 2006. After DA Jaime Esparza had accused me of violating the expungement statute by violating Ocegueda's illegal expungement order, Staurt Leeds and I filed the unprecedented action of undoing Ocegueda's expungement. Judge Barill, when confronted with her original illegal order of expungement refused to correct her mistake when shown that the records aggravated sexual assault of a child could not have been expunged for 32 years. Judge Pendergrass who ultimately came in to hear the matter, disagreed with Barill and undid her original order and set the record straight.
What follows is the opening statement of Stuart Leeds in yesterday's hearing. I want to share his words with you.
Judge Darr:
Welcome to the Bizarro world of El Paso County where you have just stepped through the looking glass.
To a world where two defense attorneys have to expose government corruption and the whole weight of the government opposes them and objects to it.
To a world where two defense attorneys have to fight to preserve and protect the public record from unlawful destruction.
To a world where the County Attorney's Office agrees to the illegal expunction of the records of an accused Aggravated Sexual Assaulter of a six year old girl and Judge Barill signs the order and grants the unlawful expunction.
And all this to help the District Attorney's secretary's brother get his records wrongfully expunged.
Make no mistake. This is all about the tail-end of the cover up of an Alleged Sexual Assault of a six year old case.
Then Judge Barill refused to correct her error and the record when it was brought to her attention; she refused to do the right thing as the case law and Judicial Canons dictate her to do and even improperly refused to hear the case and improperly referred it, without stating why she was recusing herself or disqualifying herself to Judge Ables and, in so doing, tried to improperly influence him, the successor judge, and prejudice our case in his court.
And then a third judge, Judge Carl Pendergrass of Del, Rio has to travel to El Paso just like you did to hear the case and he does without wasting any time and immediately vacates Judge Barill's order of expunction as void and calls it a legal malady and orders the recods that had been wrongfully expunged back into the record!
Now all of the witnesses to this who have been supoenaed to testify to Judge Barill's conduct have filed motions to quash so they don't have to answer for their conduct or what they have witnessed. But you won't be the first out of town judge to be thwarted by them. Judge Pendergrass is having to come BACK to El Paso next week, on 10-14 to enforce his original order vacating the expunction in a contempt hearing as District Clerk Gilbert Sanchez and Assistant County Attorney Annabell Perez, two of the very witnesses seeking to have their subpoenas quashed here today, because remarkably, the County Attorney's Office told the District Clerk not to file Judge Pendergrass' order vacating the void expunction, not to send it out to all law enforcement agencies, not to give us a copy of the order we, as the prevailing party drafted, and not to even let us see the file anymore and he followed their instructions!
So of course, they don't want to testify! Even the judge who refuses to recuse herself does not want to testify at her own recusal hearing, which I have never heard of.
So do not quash. But if quashed, we desire to make a bill with the same witnesses for appellate purposes.
Of course they do not want to testify with an FBI Public Corruption investigation currently going on at this courthouse with allegations of forum fixing which this case contains evidence of and many of these witnesses played their part in so it's all relevant as are the relationships between and among them which goes to why they did what they did.
These arguments put forth today are arguments and objections more properly made at the hearing and are not reasons to quash subpoenas; subpoenas we had to pay hundreds of dollars out of our own pockets to get served by a private process server because the District Clerk would not prepare and issue the subpoenas for the Sheriff to serve. This is what we are up against!
So deny their motions to quash and allow us to proceed and hear their testimony. This very show of force today illustrates the reasons why it is necessary to call these witnesses and recuse Judge Barill. For when a courtroom turns into a circus something is very wrong and a hearing needs to be held to get to the bottom of it.
Interestingly and in closing: A letter to the editor in today's paper quotes Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Nazi proaganda minister as follows:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequence of the lie.
It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its power to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by its extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Thank you.
What follows is the opening statement of Stuart Leeds in yesterday's hearing. I want to share his words with you.
Judge Darr:
Welcome to the Bizarro world of El Paso County where you have just stepped through the looking glass.
To a world where two defense attorneys have to expose government corruption and the whole weight of the government opposes them and objects to it.
To a world where two defense attorneys have to fight to preserve and protect the public record from unlawful destruction.
To a world where the County Attorney's Office agrees to the illegal expunction of the records of an accused Aggravated Sexual Assaulter of a six year old girl and Judge Barill signs the order and grants the unlawful expunction.
And all this to help the District Attorney's secretary's brother get his records wrongfully expunged.
Make no mistake. This is all about the tail-end of the cover up of an Alleged Sexual Assault of a six year old case.
Then Judge Barill refused to correct her error and the record when it was brought to her attention; she refused to do the right thing as the case law and Judicial Canons dictate her to do and even improperly refused to hear the case and improperly referred it, without stating why she was recusing herself or disqualifying herself to Judge Ables and, in so doing, tried to improperly influence him, the successor judge, and prejudice our case in his court.
And then a third judge, Judge Carl Pendergrass of Del, Rio has to travel to El Paso just like you did to hear the case and he does without wasting any time and immediately vacates Judge Barill's order of expunction as void and calls it a legal malady and orders the recods that had been wrongfully expunged back into the record!
Now all of the witnesses to this who have been supoenaed to testify to Judge Barill's conduct have filed motions to quash so they don't have to answer for their conduct or what they have witnessed. But you won't be the first out of town judge to be thwarted by them. Judge Pendergrass is having to come BACK to El Paso next week, on 10-14 to enforce his original order vacating the expunction in a contempt hearing as District Clerk Gilbert Sanchez and Assistant County Attorney Annabell Perez, two of the very witnesses seeking to have their subpoenas quashed here today, because remarkably, the County Attorney's Office told the District Clerk not to file Judge Pendergrass' order vacating the void expunction, not to send it out to all law enforcement agencies, not to give us a copy of the order we, as the prevailing party drafted, and not to even let us see the file anymore and he followed their instructions!
So of course, they don't want to testify! Even the judge who refuses to recuse herself does not want to testify at her own recusal hearing, which I have never heard of.
So do not quash. But if quashed, we desire to make a bill with the same witnesses for appellate purposes.
Of course they do not want to testify with an FBI Public Corruption investigation currently going on at this courthouse with allegations of forum fixing which this case contains evidence of and many of these witnesses played their part in so it's all relevant as are the relationships between and among them which goes to why they did what they did.
These arguments put forth today are arguments and objections more properly made at the hearing and are not reasons to quash subpoenas; subpoenas we had to pay hundreds of dollars out of our own pockets to get served by a private process server because the District Clerk would not prepare and issue the subpoenas for the Sheriff to serve. This is what we are up against!
So deny their motions to quash and allow us to proceed and hear their testimony. This very show of force today illustrates the reasons why it is necessary to call these witnesses and recuse Judge Barill. For when a courtroom turns into a circus something is very wrong and a hearing needs to be held to get to the bottom of it.
Interestingly and in closing: A letter to the editor in today's paper quotes Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Nazi proaganda minister as follows:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequence of the lie.
It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its power to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by its extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Thank you.