Supreme Court Strikes Down Mexico City Law Making 'Attacks on Public Peace' Illegal Jesus Aranda - La Jornada
go to original February 26, 2016

The First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) has ruled that Article 362 of the Criminal Code of the Federal District, which makes "attacks on public peace" illegal, is unconstitutional.

For his part in events that took place on December 1, 2012, on the occasion of Enrique Peña Nieto's presidential inauguration, Bryan Reyes Rodríguez faces charges of damage to other people's property and attacks on public peace. In discussing the petition for amparo [protection, like injunction] filed by Reyes Rodríguez, three of the five ministers considered that Article 362 violates the principle of taxatividad [strictness, in sense of precision], which indicates that a criminal law must be precise in order to ensure legal certainty and equality before the law.

MV Note: "... taxatividad or requirement for a specific and unambiguous meaning in the work of classification of the law. That is, the customary description must not be of such vague, imprecise, open or broad manner [i.e., language], to the degree of permitting arbitrariness in its application" (First Chamber, SCJN, October 2011).

Ministers José Ramón Cossío, Arturo Zaldívar and Norma Piña voted against the draft ruling prepared by Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena. Minister Jorge Pardo Rebolledo voted for the draft, which would award the amparo to the complainant such that the thirty-month prison sentence be withdrawn and the accused undergo his [judicial] process at liberty under bond. [The legal argument presented in the draft] is that the complaint filed by Reyes Rodríguez for the torture he suffered at the hands of Mexico City police who detained him the day of the events was not taken into account [by the lower court].

However, the [Ortiz Mena] draft ruling confirmed Article 362's constitutionality, which was rejected by the majority [of ministers seated in the First Sala]; that is, the decision will be formalized when the new draft ruling is presented, but the decision itself has now been made.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

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