Edward Murillo
Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, August 24, 2022, p. 8
Minister Luis María Aguilar Morales proposed to the plenary of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) to stop applying informal preventive detention, which could free 92,595 people currently subject to that precautionary measure.
The project points out that this practice violates the principles of presumption of innocence, proportionality and human rights.
“The classification of informal preventive detention as a precautionary measure is only a custom
a simple formal denomination that does not correspond to its way of operating or its harmful consequences, since it is clear that it stands as an anticipated sanction, since it not only restricts rights, but also deprives them”, warns in the document of 191 sheets.
It argues that said precautionary measure not only contravenes the principles of our Constitution, but also those of international treaties and conventions on fundamental guarantees signed by Mexico.
He also warns that it hurts more those who have less: it hits hardest people in situations of extreme poverty who cannot access an adequate defense and, because they are deprived of liberty, condemns their families to precariousness and to remain in poverty.
The project mentions that according to the report of last June from the Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection, there are 226 thousand 916 people in federal and state prisons, of which 40.8 percent are in preventive detention.
“One cannot close one’s eyes to this reality: custodial sentences –as a precautionary measure or by judicial sentence– not only condemn the accused, but also their families to remain in precariousness and assume the extremely high personal, social, economic, educational, health and, of course, psychological that the imprisonment of a family member entails, especially when that person is the breadwinner of the home”, highlights the document.
Propose for it declare the invalidity, by extension, of article 167 of the National Code of Criminal Procedures, exclusively in the paragraphs and portions that establish the assumptions of origin of the informal preventive detention
.
It clarifies that this does not mean that it ceases to exist, but that it can no longer be applied automatically, but that it will be the judge, before whom each detainee appears, who will be able to impose it, according to the peculiarities of the case
.
The project resolves the unconstitutionality actions 130/2019 and 136/2019 promoted by the National Human Rights Commission and opposition senators.
It is scheduled to be voted on next Monday, September 5, and to be approved it will need the vote of at least eight of the 11 members of the plenary.
The project of Minister Norma Lucía Piña Hernández on the protection of Brandon Alexis Flores Ramírez, accused of belonging to the Union Tepito, where he proposes to grant him the protection of federal justice, in order to review whether the preventive detention to which he is subject is appropriate.
