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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
Mexico Puts US-style Court On Trial
 Chris Hawley
| | "Our system has a lot of flaws, but I don't think oral trials will solve them," Mexico City Judge Pablo Picazo Fosado said. |
Mexico City - Sobbing with grief, Violeta de Cervantes doubled over on the witness stand, her voice shaking as she told of her daughter's brutal death.
"She screamed, 'Oh, Juan, no!' and then I heard a shot, and she twisted around and dropped to the ground," Cervantes said. "He killed my daughter!"
The spectators, about 100 Mexican law students and professors, watched in amazement as "Violeta," a professional actress, wept during Mexico's first national competition in U.S.-style "oral trials."
Courtroom drama like this just doesn't happen in the secretive, impersonal Mexican legal system. But it might, if President Vicente Fox, lawmakers and human rights groups succeed in a major overhaul of Mexico's courts.
"Whew, this is intense," Daniel Camilo Poo, a law student defending "Juan," said as he took a swig of water and waited for a panel of judges to issue its verdict.
"Everybody in Mexico knows a little about these oral trials from watching American TV and movies. But you really have to think fast in this system," he said.
Justice doesn't usually work that way in Mexico. There are no juries or spectators here, and trials are waged through a slow exchange of written briefs.
Simple felony cases can take months or years to resolve, and defendants are presumed guilty until proven innocent.
Fox sent a bill to Congress in March 2004 that would allow oral trials and put the burden of proof on prosecutors. Some Mexican states are moving in that direction, and the U.S. Agency for International Development is giving money to a project to help them.
The opposition-controlled Congress has done little, but pressure has been mounting since November, when a double lynching in the Mexico City suburb of San Juan Ixtayopan set off a nationwide debate about law enforcement in Mexico. Human rights groups say reforming the courts is one way of restoring faith in the rule of law.
"The justice system here just isn't working," defense attorney Alejandro Cortés Pacanins said, leaning against the bars that separated him from his client at the 41st Common Pleas Criminal Court in Mexico City.
"It's slow, and there aren't many chances to defend your client," he said.
Like most Mexican courtrooms, the 41st Criminal Court is more Barney Miller than Perry Mason. It looks like a police squad room, with desks, computers and stacks of files. Defendants stand in a separate room, behind bars.
Witnesses and lawyers sit in metal chairs in front of legal secretaries. The lawyers submit questions to the secretaries, who tell the witnesses whether to answer.
The secretaries then type up the responses and put them in a case file for a judge to read later. There are two teams of secretaries, meaning two of these depositions may be occurring at the same time, in the same room.
There is no jury, no witness stand, no judge's bench, no gavel, no opening and closing speeches, and nowhere for spectators to sit.
Cortés' client, Marco Roberto Sánchez López, has seen both the U.S. and Mexican systems in action.
He was convicted of drunken driving in 2000 while living as an undocumented immigrant in Phoenix. Now he has been charged with trying to rob a taxi driver in Mexico City.
"I've been in jail a month and a half, and they say it will be another three or four months before my trial is over," he said, lacing his fingers through the metal bars. "In Arizona, it all took about 20 days."
Theoretically, a judge can open trials to the public. But usually they are closed-door affairs.
At Mexico City's 4th Civil Court, bored news reporters watched from the hall as Susana Dosamantes, the actress mother of pop singer Paulina Rubio, sat next to a legal secretary to testify in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
A police officer made sure the reporters weren't close enough to hear what was going on.
"It's not like the Michael Jackson trial, where everything happens in one long, public event," grumbled Alejandro Fagoaga, an entertainment reporter for Telefutura television.
"Here you have to keep coming back every month for more testimony or whatever. It's tedious, slow and boring."
Some Mexican courts are experimenting with reform.
In February, Mexico's first oral trial, a manslaughter case involving a car crash, took place in Montemorelos, 150 miles south of Laredo, Texas, in Nuevo León state.
A judge sentenced defendant Alejandro Santana to three years in prison after hearing witnesses testify over two days. Gathering all that testimony and weighing the arguments could have taken three months to a year under the old system.
Nuevo León lawmakers approved such trials in June but only for cases involving property damage, assault or manslaughter.
Not everyone is convinced that public trials will work nationwide. Courthouses would have to be completely rebuilt, stenographers trained, tape-recording equipment purchased.
"It would take a lot of investment," Mexico City Judge Pablo Picazo Fosado said. "Our system has a lot of flaws, but I don't think oral trials will solve them."
Nevertheless, other Mexican states are considering the idea. They've been inspired by legal reforms in Chile, Bolivia, Costa Rica and other countries.
"This is a movement going on all over Latin America," said Joseph Caldwell, a retired judge from Taos, N.M., who has advised several countries on legal reform.
"There's a realization that lawyers coming to a judge and submitting some statement is not really good justice," he said.
Caldwell presided over the finals at the mock trial competition, which was organized by Mexico's National Criminal Science Institute and the Anahuac del Sur University to give law students a taste of the new system.
The Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez beat out 26 other schools to take the top prize. Members of the Juárez team said they had attended an assault trial in El Paso to prepare.
"In this kind of trial, you have to pay attention to every single detail and be able to respond right away," said Ana Laura Vera Sarmiento of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas University, which came in second.
"The oral system makes lawyers better, I'm convinced of it." |
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