Fox bids to reform Mexican justice

The closest that most Mexicans get to the concept of public trials, Miranda rights, and presumption of innocence is watching dubbed reruns of "La ley y el orden" ("Law & Order"). But if President Vicente Fox gets his way, fiction will become reality.

Mr. Fox has unveiled a sweeping reform of the country's notoriously foul criminal-justice system, from the police and prosecutors to trial procedures. The plan aims to wrest the system free of endemic corruption by injecting it with more transparent practices, bringing it in line with other Latin American countries including Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica, which have adopted similar legal reforms.

While Fox came to office in 2000 promising to clean up a country governed by one party for more than 70 years, he has little to show for it. Opposition in Congress has blocked his labor, tax, and energy initiatives. But with the public increasingly fed up with crime and government graft, observers say the time is ripe for passing these radical legal changes, which could prove to be Fox's legacy.

"This initiative is a milestone in Mexican history," says José Antonio Ortega, a crime expert with Coparmex, a leading Mexican business association. "People feel abandoned by the justice system, and this reform will professionalize investigations and increase transparency. There are no losers with this."

The reforms, announced last week, would consolidate the five national police forces into one, and give more officers the power not just to prevent crime but investigate it. Police would be independent of federal prosecutors.

The plan would also enforce the presumption that defendants are innocent until proven guilty.

"Mexico's constitution incorporates this concept, but it is rarely put into practice," says Adriana Carmona, a lawyer with the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights. "Here, the prosecutor's findings heavily influence a judge's ruling."

Basic legal principles in the United States, such as Miranda rights and public trials, have yet to penetrate Mexico. Defendants rarely have face time with a judge, and about one-third of cases are solved through torture-induced confessions, according to a recent study by CIDE, a Mexican research institute. Juvenile offenders are often treated as adults, with the idea of community service as an alternative to jail still rare.

The dysfunctional system results in a string of tragic stories. In March 2003 Guillermo Vélez Mendoza, a presumed kidnapper, died within hours of being detained by federal agents. One autopsy showed that he died from torture, while a second concluded that he had fallen while attempting to escape from police custody.

Excessive and arbitrary prison sentences are common. Lawyers groups say that Mexican jails are filled with offenders, many young and poor, serving long sentences for petty crimes, while serious criminals, especially those able to pay bribes and call on political contacts, evade lockup.

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