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Edward Huang
Mr. Richmond
Social Justice & Literature
9 March 2017
Advocate for Reform: The Solution
With Mexicos currently poor criminal justice system, there must be
reform to improve how just the adjudications made are. Although reforms
have already been made recently by the Mexican government, it is
evident that the changes do not meet the expectations of a state criminal
justice system. This justice system does not actually give justice to the
people trialed, rather, it can be more accurately described as an unjust
system.
In order to create a fair Mexican criminal justice system, a few steps
will need to be taken. These steps are: implementing jury duty, opening
education classes for attorneys, and requiring police investigation on
crimes.
Trials in Mexico used to have only one judge that, in the end,
decided the verdict, but with the inaccuracy of recent sentences,
implementing jury duty is a must. The jury duty that should be
implemented will be similar to jury duty in the United States of America.
Mexican citizens will be randomly summoned for jury duty, and once the
potential jurors arrive, their background will be examined, and questions
will be asked. Jurors that seem to have biases or other reasons that could
make the verdict unfair, will be dismissed. By summoning Mexican citizens
to hear the case and evidence, minimal mistakes in interpretation will be
made in final verdicts. In addition, biases will also be mitigated with a
group of ten jurors deciding on the case, as well as the rooting out of
jurors that could make the case unfair. There is great confidence that
implementing jury duty to the Mexican criminal justice system will
facilitate in achieving the goal of stopping poor adjudications.
From various statistics, it has also been shown that Mexican
attorneys are not adept at defending, potentially hurting a clients
chances at receiving the right verdict. Another measure to help revive
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the criminal justice system is for the voluntary US lawyers to teach classes
for attorneys in Mexico to learn how to better defend their clients. This
decision to call for US assistance yields benefits such as avoiding having
to pay for the costs of the education. In addition, the US has already
provided assistance to the reform of the Mexican criminal justice system
before, so adding this extension of assistance is realistic. The classes that
will be taught will focus on effectively crafting arguments for oral
presentation. Another focus will be learning to exploit evidence from each
case so that the client can be defended well. By undertaking this measure,
percentages of attorneys not providing help for the client will decrease,
and less innocent suspects will be jailed by mistake.
One of the most important procedures to ensuring the quality of
adjudications will be requiring police investigation reports be sent to the
court, if necessary. In the past, the Mexican police have had small impact
in court, influencing less than half of all trials. Police investigations have
the potential to provide the key to the whole case and help give the right
verdict to be chosen. The fact that most trials have not been influenced by
a police investigation takes out of a trial an important piece of accuracy.
Claims could be made by both sides that are untrue, but the evidence
from police investigations cannot be disputed; they are facts, verified by
science. It is shocking to know that such valuable evidence, if any, is
mostly being neglected. This only makes it a higher priority that trials
should be accompanied by police investigation reports. With solid
evidence, a more accurate verdict for a trial can be deduced.
The measures outlined in this solution aimed at improving the
Mexican criminal justice system are urgent. Many Mexicans are victims to
this unfair system and reforms must be quickly implemented to ensure
that the justice system has the general trust of the Mexican masses.