Mexican Drug Violence and Adversarial Experiments

Mexican law review, 2011

The constitutional reform on criminal justice and public security enacted on June 18, 2008 represents the most significant change to the Mexican criminal justice system in over 100 years. By laying the groundwork to replace the current "mixed" procedural code with a more adversarial model, the reform completely alters not only the institutional framework of the Mexican criminal justice system but also its modus operandi. A reform of this magnitude can only be explained by the enormous difficulties currently faced by Mexico's justice system. In order to better understand the nature of this reform, we shall first consider the problems it intends to address. After defining these in detail, we shall explore how these legislative changes may eventually affect the normal criminal process.

Mexican Law Review, 2019

The criminal justice process should not involve obtaining the truth at any price. This article discusses how Mexico has adopted exceptional regulations which violate due process considerations and create a problematic breach of the rule of law. We argue that, at a time when Mexican society suffers the consequences of organized crime, the Constitution provides for two types of regulations: one protecting human rights, which are the foundation of the rule of law; and another which infringes on the individual rights of those suspected of having participated in organized criminal activity. We examine mechanisms such as preventive detention and preventive imprisonment and analyze their treatment under Mexican law as well as in international agreements. We explore whether or not the fight against criminality and the prosecution of criminals “by any means necessary” is more important that the protection of the human rights of those suspected of illegal activity. We conclude by suggesting t...

Using a comparative case study design, this thesis explores the impact on the Mexican federal judiciary of steep rises in violent crime, proliferation of armed organised crime groups, greater involvement of the military in crime control activities and the government’s ‘war on organised crime’. The thesis develops ‘enemy penology’ as a theoretical framework based on the observation that the Mexican government has increasingly conceptualised offenders as enemies and called for an explicitly militarised criminal justice response. Drawing on this theoretical framework, the thesis analyses qualitative data from two different sites – a ‘crime control as warfare’ scenario (highly militarised state) and an unchanged context (less militarised state). Findings are examined within the enemy penology framework and also drawing on theories of judicial behaviour and judicial roles in order to explain the overarching finding that judges seem to have insulated themselves from the ‘enemy penology’ promulgated by the government. Analysis of 40 written judgements in drug cases and 28 semi-structured interviews with judges (drawn from a total of 56 interviews achieved during the fieldwork) indicated that decision making, guilt determination and sentencing were almost identical in the two locations despite stark differences in context. In both locations, the study observed an inclination to privilege police evidence, high conviction rates despite poor prosecutorial performance and insufficient evidence, and a tendency to impose minimum sentences. Interviewees discussed these issues as well as the impact of armed criminality, military involvement in crime control and judicial independence. Overall, the Federal judiciary appeared to be not influenced by the enemy penology paradigm reproduced by public officials and criminal policies. Mexican judicial behaviour was found to be strongly shaped by a formalistic and legalistic understanding of judicial duties where accuracy in law interpretation is expected, disregarding other goals, including politics and policy considerations. This understanding is enhanced by the judiciary through strict observance of precedents, reversals and enhancing law-interpreter and ritualist judicial roles. Nonetheless, the empirical data also showed that judges’ views and opinions are informed by strategic goals, attitudes, motives, managerial needs and the pursuit of self-respect and recognition. In sum, examining court judgements and judges’ views about deciding cases in the light of the prevalent ‘enemy penology’ provided a rich understanding of the way decision-making in criminal matters is constructed by judges as well as the complex and often contradictory layers that comprise the image and role of the Mexican federal judge.

Nowadays many countries around the world with a deeply rooted Civil Law tradition are moving from Inquisitorial System to Adversarial Systems. This first assertion implies several questions that need to be clarified. To illustrate this comparative studio, is quite important to describe the particular characteristics of the inquisitorial and adversarial systems. In this respect I would like to provide at the reader an overview of the evolution and the challenges faced by Italy and Mexico that in the last Century have implemented a new Criminal Justice System.

Journal of Latin American Studies, 2021

experiments and in-depth interviews, the authors show that drug cartels developed political interests, proactively influenced subnational politics and became de facto local rulers. The consequence of this is a deepening human-rights crisis as civil society is unprotected (or even attacked) by a subverted state. To break the state −crime nexus and avoid the emergence of democratic dynamics connected to the criminal underworld, Trejo and Ley suggest the implementation of profound reforms to the security and judicial sector or transitional justice processes. If Votes, Drugs, and Violence does a great job in showing theoretically and practically how authoritarian regimes contribute to the formation and consolidation of the grey zone of criminality, it tells us little about how these zones can (or cannot) reproduce themselves in liberal democracies. Although it is mentioned that these grey zones are narrower in liberal democracies, we are not told how it is possible that most illegal drugs are consumed here. If liberal democracies enjoy relative peace and prosperity, it is probably through the export of violence to developing countries − a dynamic exemplified in the flow of guns from the United States to Mexico − something the book is unable to look at due to its subnational focus. Similarly, there is no discussion on the pertinence of drug regulation for the reduction of violence, a remarkable absence given that such an approach has been increasingly suggested by scholars, activists and policy-makers as one solution to the problems. Such gaps, however, do not diminish the impact of the book for the development of a 'political science of organized crime and large-scale criminal violence' (pp. 8, 27, 291-2) and it has valuable lessons for students of the state, organised crime, armed conflicts, and democratic transitions. Better understanding of these grey zones is a particularly pressing issue for the increasing number of people around the world who now live under criminal governance regimes supported by state officials.

This report provides a deep analysis of the current process of judicial reform in Mexico. The Criminal Procedure Reform in Mexico 2008-2016, by authors Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira and David A. Shirk, analyzes the process of implementing judicial reform in Mexico as well as the impacts of the reform on the federal and state level, as well as some of the past, present and future challenges to implementation efforts. Overall, the authors find that despite obstacles to the reform’s implementation, significant progress has been made and will continue in the years to come.

2006

Our central question is: Under what circumstances can we expect a theoretically informed and reproducible measure of judicial independence de jure to be a good proxy for what we can expect to happen in reality? We argue that whether the de jure measure can be considered a good proxy for, to overestimate or to underestimate, judicial independence in reality depends on the distribution of power among the ruling political groups. Having identified those political conditions, and what Supreme Court judges can expect from them, we explore what is the likely behavior of these judges regarding decisions on cases where the government violates the rule of law or horizontal accountability. Having laid out our theoretical expectations in six different scenarios, we proceed to illustrate them using Mexico Argentina, and Chile.. JUSTICE IN MEXICO PROJECT W ORKING PAPER SERIES TRANS-BORDER INSTITUTE, USD POZAS AND RIOS-2 When and Why "Law" and "Reality" Coincide?

Although the change to an adversarial system has made a signifi cant progress in Estado de Mexico, legal provisions do not procure enough guidance to judges and legal counsellors on how to proceed with the exclusionary rule, persisting important doubts in this regard. This article seeks to evaluate if judges thoroughly respect the human rights of the accused, at the expense of the victim's right to obtain the truth. At the same time, this paper intends to answer if judges consider the seriousness of the crime while evaluating the specifi c cases for which they can admit illegally obtained evidence 2 . Among the survey fi ndings are that there is a considerably rhetorical knowledge of the illegal evidentiary material, however, there exists a predisposed lawless criminal investigation for violent and organized crime which makes prosecutors present this type of evidentiary material in court. The common consequence, if defense counsellors present arguments against this information, is that judges exclude it from the legal process and several criminals remain unpunished. Keywords: Adversarial system, exclusionary rule, illegally obtained evidence, rights of the accused.

Global Perspectives on US Democratization Efforts, 2016