Mexican Criminal Justice System is Legalized Injustice

Human Rights First Report Released on Three-Month Anniversary of Lawyer’s Murder Shows System Has Little Accountability

New York - Mexico’s criminal justice system has effectively legalized abuse and injustice, Human Rights First charges, in a book released today. Three months after the murder of prominent Mexican human rights defender Digna Ochoa (update on her case attached) Legalized Injustice provides a detailed picture of a system that encourages bad practices while discouraging fairness and due process. The result is a criminal justice system that not only disregards human rights, but is also highly corrupt and ineffective.

•  In Mexico City, a group of men offered a ride to street musicians, then proceeded to blindfold them and abduct them. The captors, who turned out to be detectives, tortured one of the musicians into confessing to an unsolved murder.
  
  
•  In rural Mexico, over one hundred indigenous peasant farmers were rounded up and detained in joint police/army sweeps. Accused of supporting a guerilla group, many were tortured to obtain confessions and or statements incriminating others. Most were detained for lengthy periods before winning their release, and some 27 remain in prison.
  
  
•  In July 2001, Mexico’s highest police official admitted in a national public address that Mexicans do not trust their police either to protect them from harm or to solve crimes.

Legalized Injustice demonstrates how torture, intimidation, and coercion of detainees are among the entrenched practices and procedures that have been “legalized” – sanctioned by or interpreted to accord with Mexican law. The report notes that coercion is “closer to the rule rather than the exception, with confessions still the featured weapon in the prosecutorial arsenal.” Other problems include the written inquisitorial nature of the Mexican criminal process, the imbalance of power created by the expansive role of the prosecutor, and a lack of effective investigative techniques.

Released jointly with the Mexico-City based Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center (PRODH), and dedicated to Digna Ochoa, Legalized Injustice provides a clear picture of the abuse, impunity and corruption that are the trademarks of a system Ochoa battled as a human rights advocate. While that system failed, in Ochoa’s case, to provide relief from years of threats against her and her colleagues, the new report lays out compelling recommendations for changes in law and practice that could help dismantle the “legalized injustice” in Mexico’s criminal justice system.