Judge Sets Date for Public Corruption Trial

Judge Frank Montalvo set August 1, 2011 as the trial date for the 11 people indicted last month on conspiracy and bribery charges in El Paso’s public corruption case. The group is accused of using bribes to corruptly obtain government contracts for Access Healthsource, a local heath-care provider.

Attorneys will have less than a year to prepare for the case – a case government officials said involves 21 terabytes of information. One terabyte amounts to nearly a quarter of a million songs recorded at the standard encoding rate for music files.

In addition to documents, it’s possible that this information may be in the form of video, recordings, and pictures. Those files would take up more space than just document, however, reproducing all of this will come at quite a cost.

Each defendant will be responsible for all of the expenses incurred for distributing all of this information, unless the defendant has a court-appointed attorney. Both Frank Apodaca, the former president of Access, and Marc Schwartz, the former spokesman for Access and the National Center for Employment of the Disabled, have court-appointed attorneys. The costs incurred in their cases will get past on to the government, and thus, the taxpayer.

Montalvo temporarily revoked bond for former border member for the Socorro Independent School District, Charles Garcia. Garcia says his attorney never told him to show up. Montalvo eventually rescinded the order, but Montalvo told Garcia: “You are in federal court. You have never had, in your life, anything, this serious, short of a heart attack. It behooves you to stay in very close communication about your case. Garcia’s attorney, Tom Stanton, took full responsibility for the mistake.