Future Forum: Guilt, Innocence, and the Death Penalty 
The Bad Guy With the Badge
Conrado Cantu called himself “the people’s sheriff.” He spoke to school-children about the evils of drugs and patrolled the dark back roads to prevent crime. But all his charisma couldn’t hide the sad truth that he was yet another crooked South Texas lawman who betrayed his community.
(Page 3 of 4)
But soon the stories turned ominous. The Herald questioned Cantu’s awarding of the jail commissary contract, worth $1 million annually, to a one-month-old business called A&J Retailers without asking for bids (which was legal under state law). Future articles would detail that the person behind A&J Retailers was Geronimo “Jerry” Garcia, with whom Cantu had had prior business dealings—and would have more in the future. Then, in September 2002, Juan Mendoza III, the son of Cantu’s chief deputy, resigned from his position as a jailer after officers learned that inmates were missing funds from their accounts. The county auditor later reported that the shortage was at least $20,000. De Leon launched an investigation, which led to the young Mendoza’s conviction for stealing an inmate’s gold chain to pay off a truck loan. That fall, several jailers were charged with smuggling marijuana to prisoners.
A more salacious side of the department’s jail administration was uncovered by a TV reporter for Channel 4, the local CBS affiliate, who reported that male jail officers were asking female inmates to have sex with them in exchange for easier lives behind bars. The reporter wrote an inmate who had since been transferred to a state prison in Beaumont requesting proof. The woman sent a three-page handwritten letter that cited times and places concerning her sexual encounters with Lieutenant Joel Zamora, who was in charge of the county’s jails.
It was the beginning of Cantu’s unraveling as sheriff. The day after the story aired, in December 2002, a jail lieutenant named Hilda Treviño received a curt termination letter signed by several of Cantu’s top officers. Treviño had once supervised the female inmates at one of the county’s jails. But after learning that a male officer was taking women from their cells for “private sessions,” as Treviño called them, she posted warning signs that women prisoners were not to be left alone with any male official unless they were supervised by a female guard. When she approached Lopez, Zamora, and Mendoza, they accused her of siding with the inmates over the officers.
Cantu called a press conference the day after Treviño was terminated and insisted that no jail employee had been fired for blowing the lid off the county’s dirty business. “We all know that sensationalism sells,” his statement read, “but it should be backed up with facts that can be verified.” A week later, the Herald reported that de Leon’s office was investigating Zamora and that he had been suspended without pay. (He was later convicted of sexual misconduct.) Within days, the U.S. Marshals Service yanked its female inmates from the county’s jails. The DA and the Brownsville police were now probing the sheriff’s department. If it was still possible to see Cantu as just a lousy administrator rather than a hard-edged criminal, that impression would not last long.
IN THE MIDST of all this drama, Cantu told a woman named Sandra Guajardo that he needed a hug. She too had admitted to performing sexual favors for Zamora while clerking temporarily for him. Now she was looking to get rehired, and she called the sheriff to see what he could do. Just after the New Year, Cantu, who considered himself a family man and was married to a local teacher, called her back and asked if he could bring some beers to her house.
The two sat on her couch and talked. According to Guajardo’s telling, after she acquiesced to his hugs, he caressed her and kissed her cheek. He unzipped his pants and pulled them to his knees, pushing her head down. After the deed was done, Cantu told her that he couldn’t promise anything but that he would try his best to find her a job. And when he tried his best, he said, he usually got what he tried for.
Several weeks had passed when the sheriff’s cell phone rang.
“Hello?” a woman said.
“Bueno,” the sheriff replied.
“Hello?” It was Guajardo.
“Animo.”
“Hey, Animo, what are you doing?”
“Yes, you called me?” he said.
“Yeah. Hey …”
“It’s because yesterday I was with the family when you called.”
“Uh-huh. Hey …”
“Yeah …”
“Um, why haven’t you called me anymore?”
“Man, I’ve been really busy with work.”
“You made me feel kind of bad.”
“Why?”
“Well, you know, I mean, after what I did here and everything, you know. After what happened …”
Guajardo wanted her payback. The conversation ensued like a nervous dance, Cantu growing increasingly defensive and Guajardo returning relentlessly to the subject of “what happened.” He reminded her that they were adults and that he kept his personal and professional business separate. He told her that there were no openings in the department but that he would ask his friends if any of them were hiring. Guajardo, for her part, sounded less like a victim as she tried to steer the conversation where she wanted it to go. “But you can understand where I’m coming from. I feel … I feel used.”
“No, no, no,” Cantu insisted. “I can’t understand where you’re coming from, but I can relate that you need a job and that you need help. I mean, that’s two different things.”
The sheriff began to get cautious. “Are you recording this?” he asked Guajardo.
“No, are you crazy or what?” she replied. “Why do you feel that way? Okay, forget it, then. When you have a chance, call me, because I don’t want you not to trust me.”
After Cantu hung up, Guajardo turned off her tape recorder.
BY THE SPRING OF 2003, de Leon was leading a grand-jury investigation into Cantu’s mismanagement of the county jails. In the meantime, she had become entangled in her own political struggle. During her seven years in office, she had amassed both loyal admirers and bitter critics—the former who applauded her commitment to prosecute corruption cases as felonies and the latter who felt that she should allow them to be settled for lesser charges. One such case was de Leon’s felony prosecution of the Harlingen Police Officers Association for making political contributions without filing as a political action committee. Among her detractors was Gilberto Hinojosa, the county judge, who felt she was inconsistent in prosecuting misconduct. Along with the four county commissioners, he had control over her budget and seldom loosened the purse strings. Although her employees were included in the county’s across-the-board raises, only once in her two terms as DA did she get a significant pay raise for her prosecutors. She wanted to convert case files from paper to digital, but the commissioners voted down her plan.
De Leon did not relent. The grand jury finished its investigation in July and took the unusual step of making its report public. “While no indictments were handed down against Sheriff Conrado Cantu,” it read, “there are concerns within his department of such a grave nature that this Grand Jury feels compelled to report to this court the following findings.” The department was marred by “an almost total absence of management” and few checks and balances. Officials placed favoritism over qualifications when they ranked applicants for supervisory positions. Employees were poorly trained and ignorant of state and federal standards. Inmates were allowed to use cell phones and have contact visits on a preferential basis. Accountability was almost nil; employees did not report misconduct for fear of losing their jobs.
Cantu’s press release blamed the messenger. “It is unfortunate that District Attorney Yolanda de Leon has injected herself into the sheriff’s campaign under the cover of the grand jury,” he said. The Democratic primary was scheduled for March 2004, and it was already clear that both Cantu and de Leon would face stiff opposition. His office, Cantu said, had done everything possible to “investigate and bring any wrongdoing to justice.”
The report was the first official condemnation of Cantu during his six years in public office, although Hinojosa and the commissioners’ court had been publicly critical of Cantu about the jail on several occasions. And yet de Leon remained unable to bring any charges. That Cantu continued to elude the justice system was not so much a validation of his honesty as it was an illustration of the web of loyalty that surrounded him. De Leon and her assistants had to resort to using subpoenas to force county employees to cooperate with their investigations. The picture that emerged from their testimonies was that of a sheriff who was a negligent manager and who used his power in less than ethical ways. But it was hard to incriminate him when it was the people working for him who had broken the law.
AS LOCAL POLITICKING began to heat up, Channel 4 obtained a tape of a jailhouse meeting between the sheriff and jail employees. In the recording, Cantu asked his jailers if they would help him with a campaign block-walking event—a misuse of government property under Texas law. An embarrassed Cantu issued a statement apologizing to his workers in case they had felt pressured. “I can hear how my enthusiasm, or ánimo, can sound overbearing and even demanding,” he admitted. But it was too little, too late. This time, de Leon knew she could implicate Cantu in a crime.
My Library
