Honduran police cleanup law may be unconstitutional

A branch of the Honduran Supreme Court deemed the law unconstitutional because it removes police officers' rights to due process. Next, the entire Supreme Court must convene to issue an opinion.

• A version of this post ran on the author's blog. The views expressed are the author's own.

The constitutional branch of the Honduran Supreme Court ruled 4 to 1 that the law defining procedures for cleaning up corruption in the police is unconstitutional; this on the same day that the Lobo Sosa government [sought] to extend the bill enabling the cleanup for another six months.  Only justice Oscar Chinchilla voted to uphold the law.
 
The law which regulates the police cleanup calls for an examination of each and every police officer, requiring them to pass a confidence check that involves a psychological exam, a lie detector test, an examination of their finances, and a drug test. The law modified the police code so that there was no due process right of appeal of any findings under this confidence check. It stipulated that any failure to pass any of the steps of the confidence exam was automatically ground for immediate dismissal.
 
Questions have been raised about the validity of the tests, and especially the evaluation of the results of the lie detector tests. A fairly high level officer who had passed the lie detector test was recently arrested during an organized crime operation with over $200,000 in cash on him. While his evaluation had not been finalized, he had, according to the Dirección de Investigación y Evaluación de la Carrera Policial, passed all but the financial checks. This case is being seen by Hondurans as evidence that the confidence tests are not sufficiently rigorous to remove all police corruption, casting doubt on the entire process.

RELATED: Think you know Latin America? Take our geography quiz!

Of the 233 officers that failed the tests, so far, only 33 have been dismissed. The rest remain part of the active police force, though some without any assigned duties, all collecting their salaries.
 
Back in August the public prosecutor's office submitted, at the court's request, an opinion that the law, decreto 89-2012, was unconstitutional because it removed the police officer's right to due process and their presumption of innocence.  The constitutional branch agreed with the public prosecutor's office by its 4-1 vote, but this decision carries no legal force because it was not unanimous.  It is now up the the entire Supreme Court to convene and consider the law and issue an opinion.

– Russell Sheptak, the co-author of the blog Honduras Culture and Politics, specializes in the study of colonial history and economic anthropology in this little-reported corner of Central America.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Honduran police cleanup law may be unconstitutional
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2012/1129/Honduran-police-cleanup-law-may-be-unconstitutional
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe