The Monitor/Palacios commentary & questions for Singleterry
Before I get to The Monitor editorial, I have some questions for DA Candidate Nereida Lopez-Singleterry, but I haven’t been able to reach her. Please call: 783-0036. It’s not my cell, but my office will call, and I’ll call right back. Early voting ends today, before the March 1 vote (next Tuesday) decides the matter. So, there is still time to upload an interview online.
Is Singleterry going to be the county’s new DA, or will it be her opponent, Terry Palacios, being sworn into office? That’s the question. Who’s going to win?
Here are the questions in no particular order:
# You say that you have been attacked for your gender (matter of public record). How so? One of the Facebook vacation photos has you wearing a very low-cut, sleeveless top. If your opponent’s campaign uses that photo in an ad, which it did, is that, in your opinion, an attack on your gender? Can you give us an instance when your gender was attacked by your candidate and in what way?
# There may be no official investigation into your former work as judge in the Master Court, as you have already so indicated, but can you say unequivocally that you resigned voluntarily, and that you were not forced to resign for whatever reason – too much time away from the courtroom, etc?
# You have said publicly that you have years of work as an attorney working civil law, family law, and criminal law. What actual work have you done as a judge presiding over criminal cases, and in what court?
# If elected Hidalgo County district attorney, and if a defense attorney objects to your husband, state District Court Judge Luis Singleterry (the 92nd), presiding over the case because he’s married to the DA, won’t that backlog the system and cost taxpayers more money? Instead of your husband presiding over the case, the county will presumably have to pay for an outside judge to hear the case?
Is any of that true?
# How to you explain the discrepancy between the vacation-photo dates and the seeming fact that you got paid for those same days – which would indicate you were in court for those dates mentioned or at least doing a hearing on Zoom?
# Is the county courthouse rumor true that you tried to place blame for the time-sheet discrepancy on one of the Master Court’s office administrators? If not true, then who is responsible for the discrepancies, if indeed there are any?
# How can you and your campaign say that it’s important for the public to know about the 2007 murder of the confidential informant and the alleged link to the 2003 double homicide in Starr County? When, in fact, the assistant U.S. attorney taking the lead in a RICO case involving the 2007 murder said there was never any sufficient evidence to link Terry Palacios to the leak of the informant’s name.
# Do you agree with the Facebook page (it’s clearly pro-Singleterry) that says Terry Palacios sold (out) a client to the Texas Syndicate for $10k, which got the client/informant killed? The Facebook page then says very clearly that he got away with it because “I got my dumb nephew (a runner for the law firm) to say he did it by himself.”
Would you ask the Facebook page to take that down, since the assistant U.S. attorney said this week that there was never any corroborative proof those allegation were true?
# Would you denounce, in general, political ads that aren’t true, and can you point to any political ads that have been aimed your way, which contain inaccuracies and what are they?
# On one of the pro-Singleterry Facebook pages, it makes mention of a close family member of Terry Palacios being a drug dealer. Yet, though he has multiple misdemeanor charges filed against him for low-level possession, according to public record, he’s never been charged with drug dealing. Mentioning the name of a close Palacios family member like that that on social media, who clearly has an addiction problem, do you think that is hitting below the belt or fair campaigning?
Is there any worry on your part that by mentioning the name of a private person (close Palacios family member) who is now reportedly in rehab, that it may help kick him back over the edge, back into the world of drug abuse?
Would you ask the Facebook people to delete that post?
# In one of the anti-Palacios ads on social media and in a mailer, it makes mention of Terry Palacios and his relatively large campaign contribution to his nephew, current DA, Ricardo Rodriguez, during the election prior. Yet, according to campaign records, your husband, a state district judge, has yet to file his campaign finance report. Are you aware of that, and can you tell us how much you, and/or your husband, have contributed to your campaign for DA in terms of a personal loan perhaps?
# In your opinion, the negative campaigning aside, what makes you the best candidate for DA?
The Monitor Stands Firm
In an editorial published Feb. 23, 2022, The Monitor daily newspaper writes that its Feb. 10 story – “Informant’s killing still haunts Starr County murder 19 years later” – did not link Attorney Terry Palacios to the murder of a Texas Syndicate informant in 2007.
Meaning, The Monitor is standing by its Feb. 10 story. No harm; no foul. Straight reporting, the paper claims.
As most people already know, Palacios is currently running for the vacant Hidalgo County DA seat in next month’s Democratic Primary (March 1). His opponent is Attorney Nereida Lopez-Singleterry. Incumbent DA Ricardo Rodriguez announced his retirement from office last year, leaving open the power seat, if you will, to the candidate that can reel in the most votes.
The race between the two – Palacios and Lopez-Singleterry – has been what one would expect from a heated south Texas county election – heated. Negative accusations are coming from both sides, but when is too much, well, too much?
Perhaps a better question is, what negative ads are considered out of bounds?
In the case of Lopez-Singleterry, her opponent’s campaign (Terry Palacios) has run ads in this newspaper that show photos of her taken while on a Mexican vacation, several vacations actually. According to the Palacios ads, Singleterry did this while still punching the county’s time clock.
This discrepancy occurred when she was still working at her job as a Master Court judge (Hidalgo County). The photos came courtesy of Singleterry’s public Facebook page and they were date/time stamped.
Before running the ads, I checked to make sure that there are time sheets that show that she punched in to work that day, so to speak, even if she was away in Mexico. There are.
State district court judges don’t have to punch a clock, by the way, but an appointed judge does. Hence, the public availability of time sheets, since Ms. Singleterry had been appointed to the Master Court, from which she resigned after several years.
If one wants to argue that she was hosting court meetings from afar, Cancun, via Zoom, apparently people have checked her court docket and found no court work done on the paid days in dispute.
If the date/time stamps on the Facebook page are misleading, then please tell us and we’ll put it into print. Those questions would have been part of our interview.
For Terry Palacios, this race has been anything but pretty. An anonymous Facebook page, actually at least two, (clearly anti-Palacios), are running attack ads accusing him of selling out a client (fed informant) to the Texas Syndicate Gang for “($10Gs),” which ultimately got the criminal informant killed, they claim.
The FB pages claim they’re dedicated to “truth and justice,” without mentioning the name of the people running them, so don’t look for any transparency.
For “truth and justice,” don’t readers need to know the source? The people behind them? Names. Profile photos?
One of the FB pages, perhaps both, could be run by a guy still living in his parents basement, community college was too tough, decked out in his underwear all day, scarfing down twinkies, chomping down on gummies, playing computer games, editing public info, taking stuff out of context, to make it seem worse than what it is, who knows. For validation, to trust what they’re reading, readers need contact info. Names and vocations.
If you’re an attorney running one of these social media pages, as some have alleged, show us your name and profile pic.
Into this heated campaign climate drops the Feb. 10th Monitor story about the 2003 cold-case double homicide in Starr County, written by Reporter Valerie Gonzalez. Before you get to the end of the story, Palacios’s reputation (ethics) is put into question by at least two paragraphs in the story.
# “The investigator (Robert Caples) who was working on the reopened 2003 double homicide believed the murdered gang member (2007) would have proven helpful to the ongoing investigation (the 2003 double homicide).”
# “The only thing I can tell you is that the actions taken by that law firm (Garcia, Quintanilla & Palacios) have had long-lasting consequences and it has even had an effect on that current case that you’re asking about (the double homicide),” Robert Caples, former commander of Starr County Special Crimes Unit told The Monitor on Wednesday (Feb. 9).”
When I first ran across the name of Caples’ former crew, the Special Crimes Unit, I thought it sounded hard core until I discovered that it had no jurisdiction over felony cases in Starr County while Caples was its commander, a position from which he’s since resigned.
If you’re part of a “Special Crimes Unit,” it sure sounds like you might be taking down some heavy-duty Starr County drug dealers in SWAT-team fashion; AR-15s or AKs; break down the front door; but without felony jurisdiction, who is the Special Crimes Unit going to bust? Some pinché pot smoker growing weed in his back yard?
“Charge him with a misdemeanor; his mom, too, since she was in the house.”
Turns out, the Special Crimes Unit (love the name) was formulated by the county attorney, whose only jurisdiction with regard to county crimes includes misdemeanors. The Starr County DA and sheriff knew nothing about Caples’ alleged involvement in the 2003 cold case, which shows just how cold the case was.
Local cop gossip says Caples now wants a job as an Hidalgo County DA investigator, but who knows. Time may tell based on who gets elected. He once worked as a sergeant with the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department before losing his job after being charged with drunk driving (for which he was later convicted). Yet, The Monitor story used him as its main go-to source to explain why a 2003 cold case was suddenly considered newsworthy in the midst of a heated election even though absolutely nothing new about the 19-year-old case had recently come to light.
So, Caples and his Crime Unit had no jurisdiction over felony cases while he was commander over in Starr County, so how and why was he investigating a cold-case double homicide? The anonymous Facebook page makes no mention of that. If it’s really about truth, let’s pursue it?
During a recent Q&A with The Monitor, which included both candidates, the Feb. 10 story was mentioned (the online interview story included a link).
“It’s so crazy. This got totally out of hand,” Palacios said.
During that recent Q & A with The Monitor (Feb. 16), Naraida Lopez-Singleterry makes mention of that Feb. 10 Monitor story -- Palacios and the death of a confidential informant.
Anyway, The Monitor’s news staff, editor, publisher, and its corporate owner, AIM Media, know what it’s doing, so I’m not going to comment any more on their Feb. 10 story. Instead, to read the newspaper’s rebuttal that its Cold-Case Story story was fair and accurate, with regard to Terry Palacios, do an online search for:
“EDITORIAL: Monitor stands by cold case coverage”
The Monitor’s editorial ends with these two paragraphs:
“Any criticism by another news organization that The Monitor wrongly reported the testimony of these trial witnesses is completely unfounded.
“Readers are assured that, in the future, The Monitor will continue sourcing and reporting important news in the community, consistent with the highest journalistic standards.”