Rosales Regrets

Photo Credit: El Paso Matters

By now you all have seen the news coverage over the last few days regarding District Attorney Yvonne Rosales and the Walmart Shooter case. 

If you haven't, the short of it is that the presiding judge in the state court is Judge Sam Medrano and he basically publicly reprimanded the District Attorney for risking the ability to take the shooter to trial because of her media statements calling for a trial next year. 

The judge questioned how her office would be ready when they hadn't, to the date of the hearing, filed on single document with the Court on the matter. He issued a gag order, preventing Rosales for repeating her mistake again. 

So I'm gonna rip the band aide off here and just speak truth to power here for a moment if I may. 

If you don't regret voting for Rosales by now, there is a problem. 

During the primary I tried to warn you all. I warned you that Rosales had basically zero trial experience and someone who ran a small family law practice and had no felony experience was NOT ready to try the most important case that will ever happen in El Paso court room. 

And thats not hyperbole, there has not been before, and not likely to be in the future, a bigger or more important case in this community. 

During the primary there was a better, more-qualified choice for the job - James Montoya. Why didn't some voters support Montoya over Rosales? Well the vast majority probably voted for the name they saw on the ballot before - but I know in the legal community there two groups of people that opposed Montoya. One, was because they didn't like his old boss, Jaime Esparza. How such learned people would complete a Juris Doctor but not recognize that two people could have differing views if one previously worked for another is beyond me. 

The other was because of Montoya's age. 

That might be the dumbest of all the reasons. Certainly, he was younger than Rosales but his experience was prosecuting cases. He prosecuted murders. He's likely tried more felonies in a fiscal quarter than Rosales had in her entire legal career when the two were candidates for the vacant District Attorney's office. 

And what has been the result? Rosales' tenure has been a series of self-inflicted wounds and one controversy after another. She hired an attorney to serve as senior trial staff who was essentially a Facebook troll during her campaign. 

And it appears he screwed up a case so bad that a defendant on trial for murder had the charges dismissed because of the conduct of the prosecution. 

She can't keep staff, never got fully staffed, and there have been a number of the judges that have spoken out about Rosales' management of the office. 

Many are now of the opinion that justice is not being served in El Paso County under Yvonne Rosales as District Attorney. 

Can you imagine how bad it would be if the Walmart Shooter case doesn't go to trial here in El Paso? Or better yet, if there's a mistrial? It would be almost as bad for this community as the actual shooting itself. Can you imagine how the family would feel?

EDIT - I meant to include this when I first wrote this post but I overlooked it in my notes:

And the worst part about the trial shenanigans (yes, there is something worse than not having filed a single document), is what the judge called the worst kept secret in El Paso, that she's been interviewing out-of-town council to try the case. First, thoughts are of course she has to hire out of town counsel, she has a hard time keeping staff. Many of the most experienced people in her office were either purged or tried to stick it out for awhile and finally left on their own. But seriously, even if you had to go to someone out of your office, wouldn't you look for someone with prosecutorial experience locally to try the case?

As one experienced trial lawyer told me today, "Her one rally cry should be as prosecutor is 'we are going to fry this MF' she can’t even do that!!"

This case is - as we used to say in the military - FUBAR. Its ate-up like a soup sandwich. Its a clusterfuck. 

At this point its hard to see how this case would be heard in the next few years considering the feds already have a trial date. 

So El Pasoans will have a chance at a do-over. There will be another election for District Attorney before the state trial. El Pasoans will get another chance to either confirm their choice in Rosales despite the litany of problems she has with basically every aspect of the job - of to right the ship and select a District Attorney with actual trial experience.