There was no justice to be had for this man in Moroleón.
The court proceedings concerning the moto accident between my in-laws and the police finally occurred a year and a half after my mother-in-law’s death (See on Life and Liberty). During the month of September, my father-in-law reported to court an average of 2-3 times per week.
So 2-3 times per week, my father-in-law rode his bicycle from La Yacata to the courthouse or the lawyer’s office.
This legal process was exasperated when the police officer involved or his lawyer or the witnesses did not appear in court and my father-in-law spent hours cooling his heels in the outer office.
We thought that perhaps that the no-shows would be in my father-in-law’s favor. Little did we realize that their absence was a mark of how trivial they felt these proceedings to be since they already knew what the outcome would be.
Decisions of guilt or innocence are not determined by a jury of your peers in México, but by the sole discretion of the judge. In Moroleón, all penal cases are determined by La Juez, whose children I had been teaching for several years. I had come to respect her over the years and appreciated her advice during the difficult week when my mother-in-law died and Chuchi slapped me with a demanda (See The First Demanda and La Novena). However, mitigating this esteem was the fact that her husband was the forensic specialist for the police in Moroleón. And him I was never too impressed with. The forensic evidence submitted by the police included a film of an accident that wasn’t with my in-laws and a dent in the driver’s side door which was used as conclusive “proof” that the moto hit the truck and, therefore, the fault of my father-in-law, completely discounting the conflicting evidence of the injuries sustained by my in-laws.
Forensics here is proclaimed the new messiah and unlike CSI, there is no attempt to find logical connections between the evidence and the action. For instance, if your fingerprints are on your own wallet that was stolen, the judge might determine that you yourself gave the wallet to the thief since there were no other fingerprints on it. Whatever!
With such logic, a dent in the door must mean that the moto hit the truck and caused the accident, not that the force of the impact caused the moto to spin from the front of the truck around to the opposite side and hit the door after throwing the passengers into the air–or so it would seem.
Despite witness testimony, despite testimony from my father-in-law, despite the injuries sustained by my in-laws all charges against the police officer were dropped and instead the charges were laid at my father-in-law’s feet for him to disprove. He awaits sentencing at the end of the month.
An appeal has been submitted to the district court in Celaya, but no court date has been set.
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Surviving Mexico 