Mexico City.- The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) ordered federal courts and tribunals throughout the country to refrain from resolving appeals that question the concept of pretrial detention, while a definitive criterion on the issue is established.
In a private session, by five votes to four, the Plenary of the Court approved a General Agreement proposed by Chief Justice Norma Piña, at the request of several judges of collegiate courts where contradictory resolutions are being presented.
The Court frequently issues such agreements, usually unanimously, to prevent courts and tribunals from continuing to make opposing rulings while waiting for the ministers to clarify the criteria that should prevail.
But the suspension of the issuance of sentences in these amparos is unusual, since they involve the personal freedom of those accused of crimes that merit preventive detention, and this matter is generally considered a priority for resolution.
The federal government has repeatedly warned the Court of a likely ruling in which it would order the non-application of pretrial detention, as ordered in 2023 by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).
The Court has scheduled three cases on the subject for late August, including one that determines how to implement the IACHR ruling among Mexican judges, and another that partially annuls a 2021 reform that expanded the catalog of crimes that merit pretrial detention, in addition to those mentioned in Article 19 of the Constitution.
These matters have been postponed several times, but Piña and his colleagues Luis María Aguilar and Alberto Pérez Dayán, who decide the order of the list of the Plenary, can bring forward their discussion.
While the government has maintained that thousands of dangerous prisoners would be released if pretrial detention is not applied, what would actually happen is that the judges who hear the cases would have to evaluate, one by one, whether or not it is justified to keep the accused in jail while he is sentenced.
Meanwhile, there are already jurisprudences that were limiting the pretrial detention, among them the one issued last April by the Plenary Court on Criminal Matters of the North Central Region, applicable in 17 states, which practically orders not to imprison any person facing an arrest warrant for serious crimes.
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