Rodriguez to Guerra: "I Do Not Wish to Work for You" As Irene Garza Special Prosecutor
By Jacob Fischler
District Attorney-elect Ricardo Rodriguez on Monday declined an appointment by the current occupant of the office to act as special prosecutor on the 54-year-old Irene Garza murder case. In a three-paragraph letter letter he delivered personally to Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra’s office just before 2:30 p.m., Rodriguez rebuffed the appointment Guerra sent him Friday. In the letter, Rodriguez took issue with Guerra’s public and private conduct since election night and questioned his motives and authority to make the appointment. “If however you are offering to hire me under your administration, I decline. I do not wish to work for you,” he wrote. The unsolved case of the 1960 murder of Garza — a 25-year-old McAllen beauty queen — resurfaced during the campaign between Rodriguez and Guerra, which ended last week with Rodriguez winning 64 percent of the countywide vote to 36 percent for Guerra. The case garnered more attention in the campaign’s closing weeks when Garza’s relatives and others at campaign events publicly questioned Guerra’s handling of the 2004 reopening of the case. To cap it off, CBS ran an hourlong 48 Hours episode profiling the case — that Guerra said portrayed him unfavorably — two days before Election Day. CNN also ran an hourlong show about the case in May. But it is unclear how much the case affected the race’s outcome, as the early voting — that concluded before the 48 Hours episode ran — broke heavily for Rodriguez. “Mr. Guerra the election was about much more than the Irene Garza case,” Rodriguez wrote in the Monday letter, a few sentences after complaining Guerra had yet to offer a personal concession. “The people made a decisive choice. You should honor and respect that choice with the dignity and grace becoming of that high office. Your showmanship clearly lacks the sincerity of purpose; and it lacks the authority.” Guerra declined to comment on the letter, but said before its delivery he appointed Rodriguez because he believed his election loss showed citizens wanted the case to be prosecuted. “I think that because of the 48 Hours piece and CNN, the way that they showed me as an uncaring individual, I think that from the resounding defeat that I received, I think the public wants the trial to go to court,” he said. Rodriguez was the perfect prosecutor for it, Guerra said, because after the bitter campaign, no one could accuse the county’s chief prosecutor since 1982 of controlling the incoming DA. But Rodriguez dismissed the move as political theater. “Your actions and the timing thereof, smack of political showmanship, and not a sincere desire to see that justice is done,” the letter stated. Members of Garza’s family advised Rodriguez not to take Guerra’s bait, said Noemi Sigler, a relative of Garza’s. “We have asked Ricardo Rodriguez not to fall for that ploy,” she said Monday. “We don’t know what his ploy is, but we know it’s a ploy,” she added later. The family worries any special prosecutor Guerra appoints will be under his control, Sigler said, calling on the DA to step down before his term ends in January. “We would like for him to step down,” she said. “If he has concerns, step down and let Ricardo Rodriguez go forward with the grand jury with his own power, not under (Guerra’s) power.” But Guerra said Rodriguez would have had “total control” of the prosecution. “I’m trying to help the family satisfy the hunger that they have,” he said. “And the hunger that they have is to have the case go before another grand jury with somebody else who they think can get justice for Irene.” But Sigler said she would rather wait until January than see Guerra involved in the prosecution. “I do not trust him. I do not want him anywhere near the Irene Garza case,” she said. Rather than accept Guerra’s proposal to prosecute now, Rodriguez re-established in the letter that he planned to re-examine the case when he takes office. “I remain committed to have the case revisited when I take office, when I will have at my disposal the resources of the office, the budget and full use of my choice of investigative personnel,” he wrote. He’d like to focus on the 2004 grand jury, he said in an interview after delivering the letter, and has not promised an indictment or even to prosecute the case, he said. “It’s been presented to a grand jury already, so the question is whether it was properly presented to the grand jury,” he said. “What I promised the family and the citizens is once we are in office we’ll look into the case and decide what to do with it,” he added. Asked about turning down the appointment, Rodriguez said: “I wasn’t going to let Mr. Guerra tell me what to do with the case.” jfischler@themonitor.com
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