WAS LIMAS OUT TO GET ELIA FOR SPOILING HIS GRAVY TRAIN?

By Juan Montoya
On December 19, 2008, former District 404th Judge Abel Limas walked out for the last day out of his courtroom.
Judicial protocol dictates that out of courtesy, the ourgoing judge hand over the keys to the kingdom to the incoming judge. That, however, was not to be the case when Limas left and current judge Elia Cornejo Lopez took over
In fact, Cornejo had done that very thing when she handed the keys to her office to winning candidate Laura Betancourt when she took over the Cameron County Court-at-Law No. 2 seat Elia had chosen to vacate.
Instead, Limas left Dec. 19, 2008 (D-Day) with the keys to the office, but before he left he had scores of cases where Jim Solis, Mark Rosenthal, Oscar De la Fuente, Joe Valle and Eddie Treviño, were representing plaintiffs in high-profile "money cases" and arbitrarily trasnferred them to the 357th District Court where his buddy Leonel Alejandro presided.
Many of those names have now popped up in the Limas corruption and racketeering case where the now convicted former judge admitted that he had issued favorable rulings in cases before his court for money.
When Cornejo-Lopez got to her court on Jan. 2, 2009, the clerk from the office of District Clerk Aurora De la Garza showed her a lengthy list of the cases Abel had transferred to Alejandro's court.
"I knew that it was my prerogative to get them back in my court if I wanted to," Cornejo-Lopez told a friend. "But I thought about it and I decided it wasn't my fight."
Protocol dictates that if Limas had wanted to dispose of cases in other courts, he would have submitted the list to Administrative Judge Ben Euresti, with the 107th District Court. Euresti would then have doled out the cases to the seven other district courts to spread the work load.
In fact, as soon as she started work in her court in January, a stream of defense attorneys in those cases came before her begging her to demand they be returned to her court.
"They wanted to have a level playing field instead of having them transferred to Alejandro," said a court insider. "They knew what was awaiting them there."
When a case gets transferred from one court to another, the judge where the case originated has a 30-day window to get them back. In the case of Cornejo-Lopez, she had until Jan. 19 to demand their return.
Yet, she was caught in a dilemma. First of all, Limas had transferred the case because they were being handled by lawyers who – as it came out later in court – had done him favors and greased his palm. A district judge gets $125,000 a year in salary. Losing an election isn't all that important since a good attorney can make that much in once good settlement alone.
When he lost the election to Cornejo-Lopez, he was uncharacteristically rude and threatening to her even to the point of demanding she withdraw from the race for the 404th against him.
"Elia was told that Abel didn't want her to run and demanded that she withdraw or else," said a close friend of the judge. "She couldn't understand why he was so angry that she was running or acting the way he did when she beat him."
 As local residents later found out, between the time that Limas left office and the time when he was indicted, he was "of counsel" to attorneys of the cases he had transferred to Alejandro's court.
"When Elia beat him for the 404th she stopped his gravy train," said the source. "It wasn't the $125,000 he regretted losing. It was losing the lump-sum payments he was getting on the side that upset him so much. She even thought that as a former cop, Limas knew people who could do her or her family harm."
In retrospect, it might have been a good thing that Cornejo-Lopez did not insist on exercising her prerogative as the judge of the controlling court and demanded that Alejandro return the cases. If she had insisted that those cases be returned, it might have sent a message to local lawyers that she also wanted part of the action that Limas had nurtured and encouraged.
In fact, of all the cases that Limas transferred, there was only one case where Cornejo-Lopez did insist on reversing a Limas ruling. That was the infamous Frizo Valero case involving the rape of a seven-year old girl. Revealingly, his attorney was Jose Valles, who was convicted and is now serving a sentence for bribing Limas in the case.
A Cameron County grand jury indicted Valero in May 2001 on four counts of aggravated sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl, and indecency with the same child, committed in 1991, 1992 and 1993. He pleaded guilty before Limas in February 2002. He confessed to having engaged in oral sex with the girl and penetrating the victim.
On March 21, 2002, Limas sentenced Valero to 10 years deferred adjudication probation, fined him $10,000 and court costs. He also sentenced him to probation that would end March 2012. However, less than a month later, Lima's released him from jail, reduced the fine to $5,000, and modified the conditions of the probation.
Even after probation reports indicated that Valero tested positive for cocaine, selling rock cocaine, continued to live near a school and was behind on his payments, Limas allowed him to remain free.
Then, on D-Day (Dec. 19), Limas shortened Valero's probation so that it would end that month, and dismissed the charges against him. Valle, it turned out had given Limas between $1,000 and $4,000 (it turned out to be only $2,000) for the favor.

"That was the only case that Elia reversed even when she knew it would go on to appeal," said the court insider. "It would have been unjust for the victim of this predator to continue seeing him free and fearing that he might hurt her again."