Prosecutor Can’t Read?
Tue, 2016-10-04 20:49
News Staff
Gag Order?
By G. Romero Wendorf
If I ever get busted for a crime, let’s hope the prosecutor handling my case isn’t Hidalgo County Assistant District Attorney Joseph Orendain, because when I get through writing this column pointing out that apparently he has a reading-comprehension problem, no doubt I won’t be on his list of favorite people.
After I published the frontpage story last week (which hit the streets Wednesday) about the pending capital murder trial of Monica Melissa Patterson (a member of the politically-charged Pharr-based Palacios family, which makes this a high-profile murder case), the office of the Hidalgo County District Attorney filed a motion last Friday to essentially gag her attorney, “Rick” Salinas, from conducting any more interviews with the media.
Until I published last week’s story with Salinas, the high-profile criminal defense attorney had kept a relatively low profile in this case, declining interviews with