Mayor Paulette Guajardo seeks to halt her impeachment trial, arguing that city council members involved as witnesses cannot impartially serve as jurors.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Corpus Christi Mayor Paulette Guajardo is making a major legal push to stop her impeachment trial before it begins, with her attorneys filing a motion demanding several city council members recuse themselves from the proceedings.<\/p>\n
The motion, filed May 5, argues that five council members who voted to advance the impeachment cannot serve as impartial jurors because they are also witnesses in the case.<\/p>\n
The impeachment was triggered April 14, when council members Carolyn Vaughn, Gil Hernandez, Sylvia Campos, Kaylynn Paxson and Eric Cantu voted to move forward. Council members Roland Barrera and Mark Scott voted against it. Guajardo and Council Member Everett Roy abstained.<\/p>\n
Guajardo’s legal team argues that those same council members voted on the agenda items at the center of the impeachment allegations \u2014 items from February and April of 2024 \u2014 making them witnesses to the disputed facts. Under Texas law, a person cannot serve as both a witness and a juror in the same proceeding.<\/p>\n
The motion also invokes the United States Constitution, arguing that allowing conflicted council members to serve as jurors would violate Guajardo’s due process rights. The filing says council members who voted yes have a personal stake in seeing that vote upheld \u2014 while those who voted no would be personally vindicated by a successful impeachment.<\/p>\n
Lead attorney John Flood filed the motion alongside attorneys from Houston-based firm Husch Blackwell.<\/p>\n
The City has not yet publicly responded to the motion. Mayor Guajardo also declined to comment.<\/p>\n
It remains unclear whether the impeachment trial will proceed as scheduled on Monday, May 18.<\/p>\n
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Paulette Guajardo seeks to halt her impeachment trial, arguing that city council members involved as witnesses cannot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-291921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}