Corruption Trial: Jones’ Defense Rests, Sanchez Takes Stand

For the second consecutive day, attorney and former County Judge Luther Jones was on the witness stand testifying in his own defense in the federal corruption trial of himself and former District Clerk Gilbert Sanchez.

Jones spent more than five hours on the stand Thursday before his defense rested.

Jones is accused of conspiring with fSanchez to steer a county contract to Altep in late 2003 through 2004. Sanchez and Jones are being tried in federal court on two counts of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and deprivation of honest services.

A talkative Jones spent the first hour of the day answering questions from his defense attorney before a more than two-hour cross examination from the government began.

Before the cross examination began, Jones received a stern instruction from Judge Frank Montalvo that he would only be allowed to answer the questions and not elaborate for sometimes up to several minutes at a time.

Jones acknowledged the warning but still had to be warned several times by Montalvo to simply answer the questions under cross examination.

Montalvo told him at one point, as an attorney himself, Jones should know that.

While Jones initially spent most of the time answering questions, turning directly toward the jury, while under cross examination he mostly looked at U.S. Attorney Antonio Franco directly.

At one point under cross examination, Jones was asked about a trip he said he paid for for Sanchez to go to Dallas in March 2004 – a trip that could have had something to do with the bid in question.

Franco said, “You testified it was to go support Fernando Parra at his DWI trial and you were also flying out to support him?”

“That is my memory,” Jones replied. “It was March of 2004. I’m absolutely certain he went to trial, but not absolutely positive about the date.”

Franco then said, “It was March of 2005, that’s a year off.”

“I thought it was 2004, but it may have been some pre-trial matter,” Jones said. “It had something to do with Parra’s DWI event.”

At times, Jones has claimed he has no recollection of implicating emails or conversations he’s had, pointing out many of them took place more than five years ago.

After Jones’ defense rested, Sanchez took the stand.

Sanchez was admittedly nervous on the witness stand. He talked a lot about the need for the county to digitize its court records since the district clerk’s office was in complete disarray, in his opinion, when he took it over.

He said they were storing and stacking boxes of items in a building that he considered a fire hazard.

The contract Sanchez and Jones are accused of rigging for Altep had to do with digitizing those records and cleaning up the office and its storage space.

“Did you tailor the digitization project to altep?” Sanchez’s attorney asked him on the stand.

Sanchez answered, “No, I just wanted the best digitization company and whatever was the cheapest.”

Sanchez is expected to be cross examined on Monday by the prosecution before closing arguments.