Officials called Baja California a leader in judicial reform at a Tijuana forum Thursday as part of a statewide Week of Justice celebration.
The forum was one of several hosted in Baja California to celebrate a five-year judicial anniversary. In 2010, the state capital, Mexicali, started hearing oral arguments in its courts. It was a change from the traditional closed-door justice system, in which judges based decisions on written arguments. Most of the country still uses the old system, but a federal judicial reform plan calls for the whole country to shift to the new oral justice system by June 18, 2016.
Oral trials are expected to decrease corruption, boost transparency and encourage trust among average Mexicans.
Francisco Rueda Gomez, secretary general for the state governor, was one of the speakers at the Week of Justice celebration in Tijuana.
"We're breaking a paradigm in terms of imparting penal justice throughout the country," he said. "I must point out that Baja California is at the leading edge of this."
Tecate will adopt the oral trial system on Nov. 11, and Ensenada will do so in February, he said. Tijuana and Rosarito will make the change before next summer.
Baja California is one of 17 states that have started shifting toward the new system. Four have completed the shift, he said. Baja California has been offering training to other states that are just starting to adopt oral trials.
Rueda called the judicial reform "the biggest and most important challenge for penal justice in Mexico since the era of Independence."
About 100 people attended the forum in Tijuana. The focus was on the need to make the new system accessible to the general population, and on how to deal with resistance from lawyers in favor of the traditional system.
Gustavo Fernández de León, president of the Mexican Employers’ Association for Tijuana, told the audience that local businesses stand to benefit from the judicial reform.
He said employers are expecting to cut costs on security equipment such as security cameras.
“We think that with this new system of justice, there will be less investment in security and more in innovation and growth,” he said.
He added that the new justice system is also expected to increase foreign investor confidence in the region.
Lizbeth Mata, deputy minister of justice affairs for Baja California, said one of the important aspects of the new system is that people will now have direct contact with their judges.
Proceedings under the new system will be open to the public and video-recorded, with a three-judge panel in charge of sentencing.
“We don’t just have one judge, we have three now, and we actually see their faces,” she said.
