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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2005 
Rare Public Trial Ends In Mexico
 Laurence Iliff - Dallas Morning News
| Alejandro Javier Santana (right), 19, charged with drunken driving and manslaughter, is led to court.
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Montemorelos - Mexico's hottest trial in years featured no famous defendant, no hint of sex, no marital murder.
Alejandro Javier Santana, 19, was charged with drunken driving and manslaughter after flipping a truck, killing one friend and paralyzing another. The trial ended Wednesday, nine days after it began.
What brought judges, attorneys and law students from around the country to this ranching town is the fact that there was a public trial at all, with a courtroom, witness stand, cameras and eager reporters.
Mexico's first public trial in 75 years is part of a bold experiment to end the secrecy, corruption and lethargy of a trial system that relies on written testimony and disdains human interaction and confrontation.
While Nuevo León was the first state to allow such a trial, President Vicente Fox has submitted a bill to Congress creating so-called oral trials at the federal level. Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Jalisco and Querétaro have their own local initiatives.
"People do not believe in their authorities, or their judges, or their prosecutors, or even in their own lawyers," said Judge Francisco Manuel Sáenz, who is presiding over Mr. Santana's historic case in Nuevo Léon.
"People need to see that we can have a justice system that is more rapid and more transparent," said Judge Sáenz. "Before, lawyers could use false witnesses to make a statement, but now they cannot because the witness is going to be questioned in public."
The trial in Montemorelos was as much about the future of Mexico's crumbling justice system as it was about the fate of Mr. Santana, who apologized to victims' families but said he was not drunk.
Mexico's failure to get a handle on crime and punishment prompted both the U.S. State Department and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza to recently warn Americans about the deteriorating security situation along Mexico's border with Texas. Several Americans have been abducted.
Only a top-to-bottom reform of the entire justice system, legal analysts said, will end the chaos in the long term.
In Mexico, only 3.3 of every 100 crimes result in someone being detained, according to Nuevo León authorities. Legal analysts call that a 97 percent impunity rate.
The trial in Montemorelos offered a new beginning, participants said.
In a courtroom big enough for only 15 visitors, such phrases as "cross-examination" and "closing arguments" were spoken for the first time in a long time in Mexico. The U.S. Agency for International Development is funding programs for lawyers and judges in the art of public trials.
Mexican justice is normally meted out in claustrophobic offices, where sour-faced clerks pound out witness statements on manual typewriters or ancient computers. Everything is in writing. And rarely is the judge, the media or an air conditioner present.
Over the course of months or years, the case file grows fat until a judge reviews it and hands down a decision. Forced confessions, bribery and incompetence are all common, human rights groups say.
While there are still no jury trials in Mexico, oral trials are an important move in the right direction, supporters say, because they are quick and more transparent. Not only are video cameras allowed in the courtroom, they are required. And the court-taped proceedings are posted on the Internet.
But old habits die hard.
The biggest critic so far is the federal attorney general's office. It does not oppose the open testimony in and of itself but rather the ease with which the public can examine any and all evidence in the case. The lack of privacy, the attorney general argues, could put witnesses at risk.
Jurors, they agreed, are likely to be swayed more by emotion than legal arguments.
Indeed, Judge Sáenz said, Mexico had jury trials until the late 1920s. The "popular trials" were abandoned because they became corrupted by middlemen who bought and sold juries to the highest bidder, he said.
But today's youthful lawyers are eager to have their day in a public court. Law student Andrés Reyna Lozano, 17, said oral trials are a step toward the give-and-take of the U.S. judicial system.
"I like the fact that the judge can see everything that's going on. I like the duel among lawyers," he said.
So far, only three judges in Mexico are holding oral trials, all in Nuevo León state. Most cases are conducted the old way, but eventually the public trials are expected to spread, state authorities said.
The Nuevo León experience, Mr. Fox said recently, "constitutes a great hope for the justice system of the country, in that it incorporates oral [testimony] and an accusatory system as a new practice."
The key selling point for many politicians and lawyers on both sides of the aisle is speed.
Judges in Nuevo León have caseloads that can run into the thousands, and, even in relatively simple cases, a sentence may not be handed down for a year or more.
Poor defendants, such as Mr. Santana, often cannot afford bail and must spend time in jail or prison, sometimes sharing cells with convicted felons as they await a ruling.
"It's good because it apparently is a lot faster," Gerardo Santana Pérez, the defendant's father, said of the public trial. His son has been held since December.
Judge Sáenz estimates that the process of gathering statements from the 20 witnesses who testified publicly over two days in Montemorelos would have taken three months under the old system.
At the trial, prosecutors said Mr. Santana was drinking with his friends when the accident happened.
But in open court, public defender Jorge Alejandro Flores, 28, argued that not a single witness had testified that the youth was drunk. A belated urine test proved negative for alcohol.
Judge Sáenz ruled that Mr. Santana was not drunk but on the other charges sentenced him to three years in prison and compensation of $40,000 to the victims' families.
Public trials, Mr. Flores said, can make a difference.
"This being the first trial, one feels nervous, but it also makes you more alert, full of adrenaline," said Mr. Flores. "This is the arena in which we can see who is really doing their job. This is where people will finally see what it means to be a public servant." |
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