PHONE CALLS LINK SUSPECTS IN WEBB CASE

LAREDO -- After 15 days of presenting 125 witnesses and more than 100
audiotaped conversations and transcripts, the prosecution in a
public-corruption trial here rested its case Thursday.

Government prosecutors led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle
concluded their case by detailing hundreds of phone calls made among the
defendants before the alleged fixing of six criminal cases in exchange for
cash.

Five men with close ties to the Webb County district attorney's office are
accused of conspiring and soliciting $200,000 in bribes during the 1990s to
fix 32 criminal cases involving drugs, weapons and drunken driving.

Two defendants are family members of recently re-elected District Attorney
Joe Rubio, who hasn't been accused of wrongdoing.

U.S. District Judge George Kazen accepted DeGabrielle's summation over the
defendants' objections that it should be delayed until closing arguments.

"Rules allow that when there are very voluminous exhibits and a huge mosaic
such as we have here, the attorneys can attempt to do summary testimony
with the evidence you already have," Kazen told the jury.

Kazen told jurors crimes can be proved either based on direct eyewitness
testimony or by circumstantial evidence, "if there's a series or chain of
events that, if you add it all up, it tells you a certain story."

Jesse Castaneda initiated most of the phone calls prosecutors say point to
a conspiracy.

According to a summary offered Thursday by local FBI Supervisory Agent Greg
Melzer, someone in the elder Rubio's home made 940 phone calls between
March 1997 and March 1998 to various defendants in the alleged conspiracy.

More than half of those calls were to defendant Agustin Mendoza, an
investigator in the district attorney's office.

Castaneda made 227 calls, mostly to Mendoza, and also to defendant Juan
Alfonso Rodriguez, another investigator for the Webb County prosecutor.

Melzer broke down the list of calls into time frames leading up to six
drug, theft, weapon and assault cases the government says were resolved
with lighter sentences in exchange for cash shared among the defendants.

Late Thursday, Kazen excused the jurors while defense attorneys made the
customary post-prosecution pleas that the case should be dismissed for
insufficient evidence.

Mr Rubio, did not dispute the fact his client accepted cash from alleged
criminals.

"There's a lot of evidence that he received money. He might be charged with
practicing law without a license," Ramos said. "But that's not the charge
here."

Rather, Ramos argued, the case should be thrown out because Rubio, who is
not a public official, had no authority to fix cases.

But Kazen said that doesn't matter as long as Rubio's "client" believed
that, as father of the district attorney, he had influence over the
resolution of cases.

The defense is set to begin presenting witnesses at 9 a.m. today.