translated from Spanish: Ex-defendant accused of rape seeks protection to return to office

Former Mexico City member Manuel Horacio Cavazos López, accused of sexual rape against his daughters at the time 5 and 6 years old and removed from office last February for that complaint, filed two amparo lawsuits, of which Animal Politics has a copy, to be reinrated in office.
While Patricia Gudiño Rodríguez, another of the magistrates whose ratification was rejected because she proposed that the parent (regularly the woman) be punished with jail who is accused by the other of manipulating her children, has already been reinstated since last September thanks to another protection.
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In the case of Cavazos López, he not only asks to annul the decision of the Congress of Mexico City on the grounds that it was not sufficiently well founded, but also calls for the application of “tácita ratification” – which would leave him in office for life – on the grounds that the deputies failed to comply with the deadline they had to decide whether or not to ratify it.
The Local Congressional Administration and Procurement Commission, chaired by Eduardo Santillán, had 15 working days to carry out the entire process of evaluation and ratification of eight judges who had completed their first six-year term, including Héctor Jiménez López, questioned for allowing the release of the ex-wife of Abril Pérez Sagaón , which months later was murdered.
The 15 days began on January 28, when the Commission received the proposal from the Council of the Judiciary of Mexico City asking to ratify seven judges, minus Jiménez López.
On 5 and 6 February, the candidates were called to appear, in which they also had to present an essay on some subject of their specialty. When it was the turn of Cavazos López to appear, a member and two deputies warned her that they would vote against her ratification because one of the requirements is to enjoy a good reputation and no longer had her for the sexual rape complaint against her daughters, even if she was not tried.
In response, Cavazos asked for a second hearing which Santillán granted him a week later, on 13 February, as the deadline for the decision approached and with criticism even from the Members themselves who pointed out that it had already been heard. The still magistrate went with his lawyers to “undermine,” he said, the accusations against him and accuse them that they were inventions of his ex-wife, manipulating his daughters to testify that his father had touched them.
The deadline was 18 February, but the President of the Commission did not submit the opinions until the 26th, so they were voted by the Plenary until 27 February and a day later, the rejected judges, including Cavazos López and Jiménez López, left office.
Animal Politics sought Santillán to ask whether this delay could be an argument sufficient to overturn the non-ratification process, to which he replied that even if the decision is in the hands of the judiciary, it does not believe that a challenge will be made for that, since the evaluations to the magistrate were negative and that did not depend on the time.
“It is an issue that we regularly have in the parliamentary field, they are not immediate mathematical assessments, but processes of generating agreements, of consensus. And the criteria that have always been established in the judiciary because that does not generate any grievance. While it is true that they were not carried out within the strictly specified time limits, it is also true that this did not give it any grievance, that is, it is not that the assessment was different. So by not affecting himself decisively, he was not affected by any rights,” he said in interview.
Read more: Teacher victim of tumultuary rape demands justice; your aggressors are fugitives
He accuses congress of confusing the concept of honorability
One of the amparo claims is brought before the Seventh District Court in Administrative Matters, and the other before the Second. Against those seeking to protect Cavazos López are the Congress of Mexico City and its Commission of Administration and Procurement of Justice, as computer authorities, and against the Council of the Judiciary and several units that have to do with payment of salaries of the Superior Court of Justice of Mexico City (TSJ-CDMX).
In addition to the deadlines, he claims that there was no correct interpretation of the concept of “honourability”, with which all the courts have to comply, as it should have been limited to their job performance. He also says they confused the concept of “public evaluation,” as he argues that this only implies that(e) the process is knowledge of citizenship, but not that they weigh opinions that he considers to be a public lynching promoted by his ex-wife and by “sensational publications”.
Political Animal was the one who released last January 23 that the then magistrate was denounced, and had access to the investigative folder, which contains statements by the girls to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, audio recordings in which one of the girls tells her mother what her father did to her, expert and psychological evidence that the minors have compatible with those usually presented by victims of sexual violence. A complaint that last September 23 marked a year old and remains unadfidized—which would involve pre-trial detention for Cavazos—but has not been filed either.
Following the revelation, social organizations and activists, human rights defenders, local and federal MPs, and even the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence against Women (Conavim) expressed views of rejection of ratification or doubts that there might be conflict of interest in the resolution of the case and confirmation of the post of magistrate.
Cavazos’s application for protection refers to the second hearing granted to him by the local Congress and claims that two of these activists attended, which deputies gave them “full probative value” to arguments that were “intrigue” and opinions poured “behind their backs”. This is even though it was himself and his lawyers who decided to retire and not listen to the defenders.
The former representative also presumed that in the documents sent by the Council of the Judiciary to recommend ratification, it was mentioned that they had received from the public 69 opinions in their favour and one against them, from the National Network of Civil Human Rights Agencies, in which they referred to the allegation of rape. But the Council itself said that these were behaviors “that were achieved in a family setting.”
Also in the Congress of Mexico City a period was opened to receive opinions, and according to what the commission chaired by Santillán reported, there were 181 in total: 157 in his favor and only 24 against. This even though Political Animal disclosed that from the day before the arraignment, the Rainbow Foundation delivered a letter that had 657 rejection signatures, and has a copy of at least three others filed on February 12 and 13, one with 41 names, including Federal Deputy Lucero Saldaña, another of AbolitionistsMx with 24 names, and one more from the Network of Feminist Lawyers of Mexico (REDAFEM) with 38 signatures.
With these arguments is that Cavazos asks to be reinrated in office, automatically ratified, and that both the Council of the Judiciary and Congress refrain from proposing and evaluating other candidates to fill the position he held as a magistrate of the Second Chamber Specialized in the Execution of Criminal Sanctions.
Find out: Judge suspended for ‘ineptitude and carelessness’ in case of rape of a girl
Gudiño gets suspended to return to office
In the case of Patricia Gudiño Rodríguez, although the case in the background is not yet resolved, the Sixth District Court in Administrative Matters of Mexico City granted her final suspension under federally filed 644/2020, in which she claimed violation of the ratification procedure as a magistrate for resignation.
The High Court of Justice confirmed to this medium that gudiño was legally ordered to rein as a judge of the First Family Chamber since last September.
His case is different because the opinion of the Justice Committee proposed that it be ratified, but the plenary session of Congress rejected it.
At his appearance, on the same day as Cavazos’s, Gudiño not only wrote an essay but developed a proposal that the figure of “parental alienation” be reinstated and not only in the Civil Code, but in the Penal, that is, that he punish himself with prison.
This figure was already repealed in 2017 in Mexico City as a cause for removing the parental authority of children in divorce disputes, and even the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) has rejected it. This after the case of Mireya Agraz, a woman who took her and her children’s lives after a judge had ordered custody of the father, who was accused of sexually abusing them, on the grounds that those allegations were because the children were “alienated.”
After that presentation, the Commission’s vote was divided, but it finally bowed in its favour. Although in submitting the opinion to the Plenary, it was not approved
That is why the Justice Commission had 20 days, after 27 February, to re-produce a dictameN. But that same weekend came to Mexico the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and within a few weeks the local Congress suspended the face-to-face sessions, the only ones in which decisions such as the ratification of magistrates can be endorsed.
According to Santillán, Chairman of the Committee on Justice, the matter will be resumed in the coming weeks to produce a new opinion and that there may be a face-to-face session of the House, in which Gudiño is permanently dismissed or ratified. This process will no longer include appearances, but with the existing one, a re-assessment of the court will be made.
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Original source in Spanish