Courts for Adversarial Trials Now Functioning in 15 Mexican States Alfredo Mendez - La Jornada
go to original December 24, 2015

With less than a year to go before the new criminal justice system for federal crimes enters into force nationwide [June 18, 2016], judicial courts for oral trials are already operating in almost half the states [Mexico has 31 states, plus the Federal District (Mexico City)].

Last month seven Criminal Justice Centers were opened in seven states. On November 30, 2015, at midnight the National Code of Criminal Procedure and the new adversarial ['oral trial'] system went into effect in those seven states. Chihuahua, Tlaxcala, Chiapas, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Sinaloa and Coahuila joined the eight states already in the system, which will operate throughout the country and for all crimes no later than June 2016.

The Centers of Justice operate with three district judges in each. These judges will be able to act as judges of control, responsible for preliminary hearings [arraignments and indictments]; or as trial judges, responsible for judging and handing down verdicts and passing sentences.

So far there are no specialized Circuit Court [Appeals Court] judges in the new system, so an existing Unitary Court [one judge, rather than three, as sit on Collegiate Courts] will be responsible for reviewing appeals.

Some centers have new infrastructure that will underpin the development and proper start of the adversarial system. For example, the Centers of Justice in Tepic, Nayarit; Cintalapa, Chiapas; and Apizaco, Tlaxcala, were built by the Secretariat of National Defense, as part of an agreement signed in 2013 with the Council of the Federal Judiciary (CJF).

In Oaxaca, the center moved into a new Palace of Federal Justice, where all agencies of the Thirteenth Circuit are housed, while in Culiacán the Center of Justice took advantage of an existing building.

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