A shocking reality of Mexico's justice system

Two Mexican lawyers and filmmakers have produced an extraordinary documentary on the failures of the judicial system in Mexico.

Roberto Hernández, a graduate student in public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and his wife Layda Negrete, a lawyer with more than 10 years of experience conducting research on the Mexico criminal justice system, produced “Presumed Guilty”, a 55 minutes documentary that exposes the reality of Mexican courtrooms.

The documentary features the case of Antonio Zuñiga, a street vendor in Mexico City, who was accused of a murder that he didn’t commit. As happen in many other cases, Zúñiga was arrested without any evidence of his participation in the crime and the guilty verdict was based on the testimony of just one witness.

During their research on the case, Hernández and Negrete discovered that Zuñiga’s lawyer had a fake license, which allowed the defendant and his new lawyers to apply for a retrial. The filmmakers got permission to introduce their cameras to the prison and also to record the complete second trial.

The material they were able to film is amazing. It really takes the viewer to the heart of the judicial system. It shows how the prosecutors “make” their cases, how they “collect” evidence, how they prepare their witness, how the judges “judge”, in few words, how dysfunctional and corrupt the system can be.

Whatever I can say falls short in front of the reality showed by the filmmakers. It is a very unique piece, shameful for the Mexican system, but very important to shed light on things that must be changed if we aspire to eradicate corruption and to have a reliable and accountable justice system one day.

The PBS documentary will be streaming online from today to Aug 4. You can watch it at the following address:

 http://www.pbs.org/pov/presumedguilty/photo_gallery_watch.php

Comments

[Enrique Hernandez jr]

I already saw it and you are right; it is a very powerful documentary that every Mexican and American of Mexican decent should see and realized the kind of corruption that exist in the Mexican system of Justice.

[Roberto]

Visit our site and get involved in our efforts to show the feature lenght version in Mexico in movie theaters.

www.presuntoculpable.org.

You can even donate to us, courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

http://www.sffs.org/donate/donate-now.aspx?pid=804

[ElPaso Native]

Way to go Lourdes! I appreciate you bringing this forth. Is there any way we can convince law makers in Washington D.C. to view this?

[Police jobs]

Mexico's criminal justice system continues to be plagued by problems. The causes of this failure includes corruption, human rights violation and abusive policing practices.

[Paul-André Lhussier as "Nomade"]

I don't understand english very well, I'm sorry. Your post seems to agree with the french point of vue.

I'm nobody but I'm sad to see Florence Cassez in a mexican jail. French governement says quite the same as your post and we think it could be a good thing to boycot mexican products, to try to help Florence Cassez.

The problem I see is that France is not very important for Mexic. Maybe could you help us, making buz around Florence Cassez, calling for boycots or other actions you could find usefull.

I don't know You, I don't know Florence Cassez, but I love (real) justice and hope the "Presumed Innocent" concept will win.

Thanks to You. (and sorry again for my bad english)

[Mark]

The causes of this failure includes corruption, human rights violation and abusive policing practices.