Alfonso Martín del Campo case

On May 30, 1992, federal highway police at a highway tollbooth near Mexico City were approached by a man who complained that intruders had assaulted him in the home he shared with his sister and brother-in-law, kidnapped him in a car stolen from the family, and then abandoned him on the highway. The federal highway police took the complainant, Alfonso Martín del Campo, to his residence, where they found the bodies of his sister and brother-in-law. Mexico City police detectives, part of what was then the judicial police, then took Mr. Martín del Campo to Public Ministry installations of the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office. There, police detectives tortured him until he signed a confession saying he murdered his sister and brother in law and staged the kidnapping.

Based on that confession, he was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison where he remains to this day. The judge made this ruling despite the fact that Mr. Martín del Campo told him of his ordeal with the police and about signing a false confession. Further, although one of the police officers later admitted to beating Martin del Campo and was sanctioned by the Prosecutor’s office for torture, and although medical reports provided to the courts confirmed injuries caused by the torture, the conviction was not overturned on appeal. Human Rights First joined other human rights organizations in petitioning the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to consider the case. They have asked the Commission to determine the violations committed against Mr. Martín del Campo (including freedom from torture, the right to due process, the right to judicial protection and the right to personal integrity), and to make recommendations to the Mexican Government in its Article 50 report, to be issued shortly. These recommendations should include an order to free Mr. Martín del Campo from prison, investigate the officers involved in his arrest and torture, and to pay damages to the victim and his family. The Mexican government continues to deny the torture claim, and although it has recognized that there were several irregularities in the interrogation process, it refuses to accept that these irregularities affect in any fundamental way the integrity of the confession as evidence.

The use of torture to elicit confessions is common in cases where there is little other evidence to convict the suspect. The case of Martín del Campo illustrates other irregularities as well, including the fact that no judicial warrant was ever issued to detain him; and he was not provided with access to counsel, including during police questioning or when he was forced to sign the statement in which he allegedly confessed to the crime.

Martín del Campo’s travails provide a partial checklist of problems requiring reform in both police investigations and the criminal justice system generally. The case is analyzed further in the appendix of the publication Legalized Injustice, which explains how the Mexican criminal justice system is routinely used to the violate human rights of people it targets.