USD Magazine Fall 2015

TORERO  NEWS

Janice Deaton ‘10 (MA), a lead trainer of the Justice in Mexico Project, is part of a team that’s working toward bolstering the rule of law in Mexico.

Justice in Mexico project helping train lawyers in new judicial reforms [ d u e p r o c e s s ] MAK ING RULES OF LAW

The new adversarial trials will provide greater emphasis on the due process, including the pre- sumption of innocence and the right to adequate legal defense. But perhaps more importantly, the new process will require sig- nificant modifications to police agencies and their role in crimi- nal investigations. “As a criminal defense lawyer and human rights advocate, these changes are something I really believe in,” explains Janice Deaton ’10 (MA), an alumna of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies and Justice in Mexico lead trainer. “This new system will address a lot of the problems and injustices that existed in the old system, but it’s a work in progress. Certain skills are required to argue in per- son,” Rodriguez says. The United States is one of the key providers of trainers for the reform. With help from the Merida Initiative, a strategic partnership between the United States and Mexico continues to grow, and all those involved with the Mexican criminal justice community must be retrained in order for the reform to succeed. As a neighbor to Mexico, the University of San Diego is poised to help. A number of USD institutes and faculty members are involved in all aspects of enhancing the jus- tice system in Mexico, including the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies’Trans-Border Institute (TBI). Its director, Everard Meade,

CHRIS PARK

he Justice in Mexico Project has played a key role in helping to implement and enhance judicial sector reform in Mexico since 2009. The freestand- ing program—which resides in USD’s departments of political sci- ence and international relations — connects the university to Mexico in ways that transcend geographic proximity. As part of the group’s work, which has the goal of “improving citizen security, bolstering the rule T by Taylor Dawn Milam

ous amounts of paperwork that ultimately opened the door for systemic injustices. “The old pro- cess would take two or three years per case,” explains project coordinator Octavio Rodriguez, who runs the program alongside Political Science Associate Profes- sor David Shirk. “The defendant would be in cus- tody during that entire time. If the defendant was eventually acquit- ted, they had lost three years of their life to a jail cell. With the new process, it takes three months.”

of law and protecting human rights in Mexico,” the project has brought together lawyers from both sides of the border to adjust to sweeping changes in the Mexi- can criminal justice system. The biggest shift is the introduction of oral, adversarial trials. Unlike the American justice system, commu- nication in Mexican courts was previously handled exclusively through written documents. The new system will be implemented nationwide in June 2016. The old system required copi-

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