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 Editorials | Issues | June 2008 
Mixed Reactions to Overhaul of Legal System
 Diego Cevallos - Inter Press Service
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 |  | The legal reform has more cons than pros; its approval is a serious problem.
- Adrián Ramírez |  | | | |
Mexico City - The Mexican government began Tuesday to usher in a series of constitutional reforms aimed at revolutionising, in eight years, the country’s opaque criminal justice system, which leaves 97 percent of all crimes unsolved and often victimises the poor. But human rights activists warn that there are risks.
They say, for example, that the clause allowing those suspected of involvement in organised crime to be held without charge for up to 80 days is a "dangerous step."
The legal reform "has more cons than pros; its approval is a serious problem," Adrián Ramírez, president of the Mexican League for the Defence of Human Rights, told IPS.
Closed door trials based on written evidence, in which judges rarely see the defendants, will gradually be replaced by oral trials open to the public.
Many officials and observers in Mexico say the legal reform, approved by Congress in 2007 and by most of the country’s 32 state parliaments, will bring about cultural changes that will strengthen the rule of law in the country.
"This is an extremely challenging reform," because it represents "a complete change in the culture of legality, which is virtually nonexistent; we will have to learn how to respect the law," said José Luis Santiago, assistant prosecutor for legal and international affairs in the Attorney General’s Office.
The adoption of oral trials is a positive development, "but making it a constitutional right to hold people without charge is nonsense, because that will make it possible to torture and even forcibly disappear people," said Ramírez.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch had unsuccessfully pressed for that point to be modified, noting in a message to the Mexican government that 80 days is one of the longest pretrial detention times in any western democracy, where the maximum time limit for holding someone without charges is usually seven days or less. Nevertheless, Human Rights Watch welcomed the reform as "a historic opportunity for Mexico to overhaul a very dysfunctional justice system." The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico also criticised that aspect of the reform, but applauded the replacement of closed-door proceedings with oral trials open to the public.
It will take two billion dollars to fully implement the judicial reforms and adapt the system to the new rules, said magistrate Luis María Aguilar, a member of the Federal Judicial Council (CJF). But it is not yet clear where these funds will come from, because they have not been budgeted.
"This is perhaps the most far-reaching reform of the criminal justice system that we have had in Mexico in a long time," and is a step towards the "strengthening of our justice and public security institutions," President Felipe Calderón said Tuesday.
The reforms also create a National Public Security System, which will bring into line the rules for hiring, training, evaluating and certifying the country’s roughly 400,000 police officers, who currently belong to a patchwork of different forces. The national registry will also prevent corrupt police officers from being hired by other law enforcement agencies.
"Now it is essential that we act immediately to modernise the institutions that make up our security and criminal justice system, to promptly implement the mandate contained in this constitutional reform," said Calderón.
Judges, prosecutors and defence attorneys around the country will have to undergo training in order for the reforms to go into effect.
Ramírez said the high crime rates and climate of insecurity prompted the conservative Calderón administration and most of the country’s lawmakers to approve the constitutional amendment. Although he said the adoption of oral trials was a step forward, he argued that "it does not compensate the lengthy pretrial detention period, which can be decreed on the basis of a mere decision by a prosecutor."
The only clause that the legislators agreed to eliminate from the reforms, in response to protests from human rights groups, was permission for the police to search a home without a warrant if they believe a crime is being committed.
Most of the country’s political leaders, spokespersons for the judicial system and law school deans have come out in favour of the reforms, especially the new public trials. And with respect to the lengthy pretrial detention, they said it is necessary in order to crack down on organised crime.
The overhaul of the system is designed to restore the presumption of innocence, cut down the number of people held in preventive detention, and reduce the weight of confessions in judicial proceedings.
In addition, a specific judge will be named to follow the entire legal process through to the sentencing stage, victims will be given greater leeway to present evidence, and judges will be required to be present at every hearing.
Furthermore, protected witnesses will be able to testify in trials of suspected members of drug trafficking gangs, and defendants who cooperate will be eligible for sentence reduction and other benefits.
Legislators believe that the reforms will help overcome the injustice that characterises Mexico’s judicial system, where around 250,000 people are currently crowded into prisons built to hold less than 160,000, and where 80 percent of inmates who have received sentences have never even seen the judge who handed them down.
A study published in 2002 by the Centre for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), based on surveys carried out among prisoners, concluded that it is not the most dangerous criminals who are found in Mexico's prisons, but those who are unable to gain a favourable legal outcome because of poverty or ignorance about how the system works.
Half of the inmates in Mexico's penitentiaries are serving sentences for minor non-violent theft and burglary involving amounts of less than 600 dollars, said the study, which added that a mere five percent of the robberies involved more than 7,500 dollars.
Official figures indicate that less than three percent of all crimes committed in this country of 107 million lead to a conviction. |
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