Iván Evair Saldaña
La Jornada Newspaper
Tuesday, January 20, 2026, p. 8
The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) determined yesterday that the sentences issued by its now defunct chambers cannot be reviewed, as they are unassailable decisions whose reopening would violate legal certainty and the principle of res judicata; However, he clarified that another debate is pending to define whether it is possible to review final rulings by judges in which procedural fraud is presumed.
The ruling of the highest court, under a project by Minister Lenia Batres Guadarrama, dealt a setback to the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) by closing the way to challenge the simple protection granted last June to Juana Hilda González, who obtained her freedom after 19 years in prison, despite a sentence of almost 79 years for the kidnapping of Hugo Alberto Wallace.
The challenge, promoted by former prosecutor Alejandro Gertz Manero, was analyzed in a pending consultation raised by the minister president, Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, on the appropriateness of reviewing sentences from defunct chambers in direct protections attracted.
Unanimously, the plenary session determined that the sentences handed down by the chambers of the previous Court, when resolving direct amparos due to the power of attraction, are final and do not admit an appeal for review, since the Constitution and the Amparo Law only provide for it against rulings of collegiate courts and the highest court cannot review itself.
“It would mean ignoring the definitive nature of the sentence handed down by the defunct first chamber by introducing a means of challenge not provided for in the constitutional framework,” said Batres.
The matter generated controversy. Seven ministers requested the deletion of paragraph 52 of the Batres project, which states that “this pronouncement does not prejudge” the criterion that the new integration of the SCJN could adopt on the figure of fraudulent res judicata, as it is a different institution that would imply the eventual opening of a new process for serious procedural fraud.
Minister Yasmín Esquivel Mosso maintained that the paragraph should be eliminated because the project stated that fraudulent res judicata is provided for expressly or implicitly in the laws, a criterion that was not shared by the majority of the plenary session. In the same sense, María Estela Ríos González said that this argument is not related to the substance of the consultation, a position to which Minister Giovanni Figueroa Mejía joined, considering it unnecessary to advance a definition on that figure.
When defending the paragraph, Minister Batres said: “it is my project” and the regulations only provide for voting, not the deletion of sections.
