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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2008 
Juárez Courts Take Historic Leap in Adopting Legal Reform
 Louie Gilot - El Paso Times
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 |  | Now the judge decides everything in a public manner. The prosecutor has to tell me about the case, then the defense lawyers and you get to know the victim and the suspect personally. All gets resolved in an hour.
- Lorenzo Villar |  | | | |
Juarez - The brand new courthouse in Juárez - a cluster of small courtrooms with fresh paint and new furniture - may seem unremarkable to an American visitor but it represents a historic change in Mexico.
In these rooms, a sweeping legal reform is taking place.
For the first time, the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, the judge and the accused are in the same room and proceedings are open to the public. The parties take turns presenting their case to the judge in the back-and-forth familiar to anyone watching televised courtroom dramas.
The old way was a bureaucratic system in which lawyers sent written depositions to a judge sitting in an office - not a courtroom. The parties often did not meet face to face and the process dragged on for months if not years.
Lorenzo Villar, a former lawyer and one of 12 newly-minted judges, is an enthusiastic believer in the new way.
"The biggest difference is the judge doesn't stay in his office and his assistants do all the work," he said. "Now the judge decides everything in a public manner. The prosecutor has to tell me about the case, then the defense lawyers and you get to know the victim and the suspect personally. All gets resolved in an hour."
Earlier this month, Mexican senators voted to approve a national legal reform that includes public, oral trials, among other things, but some Mexican states had already started on their own. First was Nuevo Leon and now Chihuahua, where the reform started in Chihuahua City last year. Juárez followed suit in January and other Chihuahua cities are scheduled to take the leap this summer.
In Juárez, the new judges ruled on 160 cases in January and February, mostly thefts, their records indicated.
Many other cases were settled between the parties. The most serious cases, for instance sexual murders, will be heard by a panel of three judges, but there hasn't been one such case ready for court so far. There are no juries in Mexico.
At first glance the new trials look very American and several of the new judges even spent some time at the El Paso County Courthouse, watching American judges at work, at the invitation of the El Paso Bar Association.
"This new system has many similarities with the common law system of El Paso ... (this) is the main reason for the great interest by the entire legal community of the state of Chihuahua to learn from our experiences with our legal system," Judge Robert Anchondo, association president, said.
Still, sitting in on one of these new Mexican trials may feel to an American visitor like stepping into an alternate universe.
During one carjacking case this month, the prosecutor, speaking in a somewhat theatrical manner, read the facts of the offense in open court.
The defendant, a 25-year-old man wearing a torn T-shirt, was arrested March 2 for taking a car at gunpoint from a woman stopped at a red light, the prosecutor said.
The defense attorney declined to speak, as did the defendant.
Then, the prosecutor told the judge that the victim was in the audience and wanted to pardon the alleged carjacker. A woman rose from the back of the courtroom.
"Do you realize that if you pardon him, we won't be able to continue with the case?" Judge Alberto Ocon asked the woman.
"Yes, I understand. We are going to make an agreement," the woman said.
The defendant was ordered released.
Defense lawyer Ulises Soteno Torres explained after the hearing that the theft really did not happen as the prosecution claimed. He said his client was a friend of the victim's son and that the two young men took the car, but not in a carjacking.
Soteno said he was pleased with the outcome of his case. He said he liked the fact that the judge doesn't know anything about the case before the hearing.
"There is more guarantee (against corruption) in this system. Before, there could be pressures," he said.
In the United States, victims cannot pardon suspects and judges are familiar with details of the cases they are about to hear.
Louie Gilot may be reached at lgilot(at)elpasotimes.com
The Associated Press contributed to this story. |
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