Judge Yahara Lisa Gutierrez of the 65th Judicial District Court does not know the law and continues to disregard the law. Specifically, she does not understand the expungement law and the laws governing Free Speech. Expungement law enables you to have an arrest record destroyed. Free Speech law enables the private citizen to talk about the arrest, whether the records have been expunged or not. One would think that Gutierrez would be very well acquainted with expungement law since she came from the County Attorney’s office, the office that handles these cases. Also one would think Gutierrez would know the expungement law since she loudly and proudly CLAIMS to have had her own arrest for drunken driving expunged. (Of course she has never produced an order documenting this claim, if one even exists, so who knows?)
We know Gutierrez doesn’t understand expungement law and Free Speech laws because in less than two months she has filed two grievances against me with the State Bar of Texas and one against Stuart Leeds. The State Bar immediately dumped them all as frivolous. In the second complaint, the State Bar even wrote Gutierrez that she was carping about the same thing and that they had already dumped her complaint. They basically told her to let it go and to move on with her life, such as it is. What is Gutierrez’ complaint? In the first complaint she whines that Stuart Leeds and I have carried a placard with the El Diario article that came out about her drunken driving arrest, an article that also includes a color photo of her magnificent mug shot. (see previous blog for photo). She also snivels that I dared to use the placard on my channel 7 debate for the County Attorney race (check that debate out on line. It is great). Most recently she complains that I published her arrest records and the Diario article on this blog.
In her ethics complaint, Gutierrez actually wrote, “Ms. Caballero has a blog on her website Theresacaballero.com (See Attachment A & B) Ms. Caballero’s writings are reckless, false and misrepresent the truth. Further, in the blog dated March 22, 2010 there is a link under which a reader is able to retrieve the expunged police report of my 2000 arrest.”
Gutierrez does not understand the rules of ethics vis-a-vis defamation law and she does not understand Free Speech. It is not unethical to expose a bad judge. In fact, it is our duty and it is our political process. Otherwise, how do you get bad judges like Gutierrez off the bench? As for “misrepresenting the truth,” (whatever that means) Alexander Hamilton gave us the law that the Truth is a Defense.–Gutierrez will have a hard time suing anyone over her DWI since we can all see the records ourselves and she will have a hard time suing someone for claiming that she is lazy since her empty court room and her transfer order are evidence per se of her blatant derelicton of her duties.
What Gutierrez is saying is that Stuart Leeds and I do not have the right to free speech. We do not have the right to use newspaper articles about her. We do not have the right to comment on her empty court room (by the way, last Thursday, April 29, 2010, her staff told my process server that she would not be in to work until 10:00 a.m.). We do not have the right to expose her dereliction of duty when she transferred almost all of her family law cases to the 171st, effective her first day in office. She truly believes that we are not allowed to expose her shennanigans because now she is a judge. The rule of ethics she cites in her complaints is the rule that states that you may not disparage a judge. She thinks that we can’t even talk about what she did before she was a judge. Interesting that Gutierrez believes that the truth is disparaging. What is also remarkable is that Gutierrez thinks that lawyers have fewer rights to free speech than non-lawyers. According to her logic, only a non-lawyer may expose her drunken driving arrest, her campaign lies, her lack of understanding of the law, her poor English and her sad and empty court room.
Of course Gutierrez also does not understand recusal law and has, on at least four cases, violated recusal law as we so aptly proved last week in front of a court room full of people. And once again, Gutierrez had to be forced off of our case because she cannot be fair and cannot properly dispense justice. It was truly embarrassing for her last week but then that is what happens when you don’t do the right thing the first time around. As of the day before the hearing, she was claiming that she could be fair to Stuart and me and our client all the while she was filing a complaint with the State Bar against me. Is this a symptom of dishonesty, stupidity, megalomania or all three? This would be the ninth case Gutierrez has been removed from. All of our clients have either outright won since we have forced her off their cases (And yes, forced her. We had to pry her off them by taking a cleaver to her stubborn, manicured fingers just like we always do) or they have been placed in a position to win in the future by getting her off their cases and in front of a judge who knows the law and is not biased and prejudiced.
Hopefully the public takes note of this because in two and half short years you will have the chance to get her not just off your cases but out of the empty court room she presides over in between her manicures.
Sito Negron from the El Paso Inc. was present at last week’s Gutierrez debacle. Still no word from him or the Inc. on Gutierrez’ order transferring all of her family law cases to the 171st, an order that belies her campaign promises to the public. It also appears Sito Negron has been placed on the Theresa Caballero beat at the Inc.