Friday, August 15, 2014

Transparency Denied: Judge shuts down live tweets in ex-Sheriff Lupe Treviño lawsuit

8/15/2014


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A judge has ruled that live updates on Twitter will not be allowed for a deposition involving ex-Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño.
The former sheriff was recently sentenced to five years in federal prison for money laundering but his legal woes are not over.
Treviño is still facing civil lawsuits filed against him while he was serving as sheriff.
In one of the lawsuits, former Republican sheriff candidate Robert Caples sued Treviño over illegal campaign contributions from Weslaco drug trafficker Tomas "El Gallo" Gonzalez.
Javier Peña, an attorney for Caples, questioned Treviño during a deposition back on August 1st.
A deposition is a question-and-answer session between both parties during the "discovery phase" of a lawsuit and is not part of the trial.
Peña's law firm provided live updates of their questions and the ex-sheriff's answers from the proceedings on their Twitter account.
Treviño's defense attorney Preston Henrichson objected to the line of questioning and the live tweets.
Both sides of the lawsuit appeared before Judge Rudy Delgado in the 93rd State District Court in Edinburg to resolve the issue late Wednesday morning.
After hearing both sides, Judge Delgado ordered that the deposition will be allowed to continue on Friday afternoon.
Peña is free to ask whatever questions he wants during the remaining hour and 48 minutes of time that he has left in the deposition.
But Judge Delgado ordered that Peña cannot tweet the proceedings.
"Our technology is far outpacing ability to formulate rules," Judge Delgado.


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