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 Americas & Beyond | April 2008 
Killer Who Served 5 Years in Mexico Can't be Retried in U.S., Judge Says
 Ray Huard - San Diego Union-Tribune
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| | Celestino Mendez Martinez waited to hear the judge's ruling yesterday. (John R. McCutchen/Union-Tribune) | | |
In a case that has drawn international attention, murder charges were dismissed yesterday against a man previously convicted of the crime and imprisoned in Mexico.
Judge Herbert J. Exarhos ruled that Celestino Mendez Martinez is protected by state and federal constitutions from being tried in California for stabbing his estranged wife to death in May 1988 in El Cajon.
Martinez's lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Kim Vegas, said the judge “did the absolute right thing.”
“The Constitution is alive in El Cajon,” she said.
Several members of the victim's family were in the courtroom, but they declined to comment after the judge made his ruling.
Deputy District Attorney Kathryn Gayle said prosecutors may appeal.
Martinez will remain in jail on federal immigration charges, she said.
At the time of his September arrest, Martinez was living in Oceanside under an assumed name after entering the country illegally, prosecutors said.
In 1988, Martinez told police that he was angry with his wife Magdalena over custody provisions in their pending divorce and confronted her at her parents' house after stopping at a store to buy a fishing knife.
Martinez, 43, stabbed his wife and wounded a neighbor who tried to intervene. He fled to his parents' house in Tijuana with his 7-month-old daughter and was arrested by Mexican police the next day.
Although the crime was committed in El Cajon, Martinez was prosecuted and convicted in Mexico under a section of Mexico's penal code, Article 4, which allows Mexican citizens to be arrested and prosecuted in Mexico for a crime committed in the United States.
Until 2004, California prosecutors were barred from trying someone already convicted in another country. The law was changed in 2004, and prosecutors went after Martinez, saying the five years he served in a Mexican prison was insufficient punishment for murder.
If tried and convicted in California, Martinez faced a potential prison sentence of 25 years to life.
Exarhos ruled that it violated the Constitution to apply the 2004 change of law retroactively to the 1988 murder of Magdalena Martinez.
Japanese media were following the El Cajon case because it is similar to that of a Japanese businessman accused of killing his wife in Los Angeles in 1981 then fleeing to Japan.
Kazuyoshi Miura was convicted in Japan of the Los Angeles slaying and was sentenced to life in prison, but the conviction was reversed in 1998. Miura was arrested on California murder charges in February when he traveled to Saipan, a U.S. territory. He is awaiting extradition to California.
Gayle said it was unclear how the ruling in El Cajon would affect the Los Angeles case.
“Another judge could, of course, interpret the statue differently,” she said.
Ray Huard: ray.huard(at)uniontrib.com |
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