Mexico threw open the doors to its judicial system on Tuesday, allowing US-style public trials and creating a presumption of innocence.
Under the long-awaited constitutional amendment signed by Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday, guilt or innocence will no longer be decided behind closed doors by a judge relying on written evidence.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers will now argue their cases in court, and judges must explain their decisions to defendants.
“This is perhaps the most important reform to the criminal system that Mexicans have had in a long time,” Calderon said after signing the amendment.
The law is expected to go into effect today, a day after it is published in the Federal Registry. But it is unclear how quickly Mexico will start having public trials.
The country now faces the long, tedious task of implementing the law’s new provisions, which must be in place by 2016.
That includes training thousands of lawyers and judges across the country on the logistics of holding a trial. Even courthouses must be modified to make room for Mexicans who will be able to attend trials.
It will likely take even longer to change the culture surrounding treatment of the accused in Mexico, where suspects are routinely paraded before cameras — sometimes holding weapons they are accused of using in crimes — even before they have been charged.
“Now we can offer citizens a more transparent judicial system that respects human rights and protects your rights with more speed and efficiency,” Calderon said.
All trials will be open unless a judge decides a case must be closed because of national security reasons or to protect a witness or a minor.
Analyst George Grayson said the amendment brings the judicial system into the 21st century.
“This is long overdue,” said Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. “It was a medieval system.”
Such a reform had been in the works for more than a decade, but the two previous presidents had been unable to get it through congress. At least 17 of Mexico’s 31 states had to approve the constitutional amendment.
Calderon said the reform also will boost his fight against organized crime.
Prosecutors can now hold organized-crime suspects without charge for up to 80 days. Properties seized by law enforcement will pass to the state after it has been proved that they were acquired illegally — even if the titleholder has never been charged with a crime.
Previously, criminals place their properties in the name of their associates or relatives so they could fight in court for them to be returned even if they were illicit.
This will allow police to hit with “more weight the operative and financial structures of organized crime,” Calderon said.
Tamara Taraciuk of New York-based Human Rights Watch applauded the reform as “a historic opportunity for Mexico to overhaul a very dysfunctional justice system.”
But she expressed concern about prosecutors being allowed to hold organized crime suspects for up to 80 days without being charged, saying that’s one of the longest pretrial detention times in any democratic country.
“It contradicts various international human rights standards,” she said.
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