Judge Epaminondas González Dubón, President of the Constitutional Court, killed in Guatemala City in 1994 [1]

Threats against the judiciary - to influence cases or punish judges for past decisions - were common in the 1990s.[2] In March 1994, Constitutional Court President Epaminondas González Dubón received death threats and his house was monitored by two men. A week later, the judge was shot and killed in his car in front of his family. The year before Judge González’ murder, he had ruled that then-President Jorge Serrano’s self-imposed coup,[3] which would have allowed the country to slip into military rule, was unconstitutional. Just a month before his murder, Judge González cast his vote to allow the extradition to the United States of Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Ochoa Ruiz, a military officer and now convicted drug trafficker. After the murder, the remaining Constitutional Court judges voted against the decision to extradite Ochoa. There was “widespread speculation” that Judge González was killed because of that case,[4] although his decisions in many other cases also challenged the interests of the civilian and military elite.

From the outset there were many barriers to the prosecution of Judge González’s killers. In December 1995, six people were convicted and sentenced to two to twelve years imprisonment each for their role in the crime. The public prosecutor’s office appealed the light sentences, but denied the killing was a political crime. Two of the six sentences were overturned on appeal in 1996 and these prisoners released. Subsequently, the Supreme Court reversed the appeal, ordering a re-trial for all defendants and the arrest of the two prisoners who had been released, brothers Mario and Marlon Salazar López. Mario remained at large until 2001. A third alleged murderer, Antonio Trabanino Vargas, was indicted in 1996.

In 1997, the case was “reactivated,” and charges were brought by the First Court of First Instance against Marlon Salazar López and Trabanino; the following year they were both sentenced to 27 years in prison for murder, while three others in the case were convicted of robbery and drug possession and six acquitted. Appeals by both the prosecutors and the defendants were delayed until 2000, when the lower court decision was upheld by the Third Division of the Court of Appeal. In October 2001 the sentencing court affirmed two sentences against Marlon Salazar López and Trabanino of 25 years each. While the appeals were in progress, an arrest warrant was outstanding for alleged murderer Mario Salazar López, who was not arrested by police until May 2001. A further appeal in the case is currently pending. According to MINUGUA, “no ruling was made regarding the responsibility of members of the armed forces as instigators and abettors” of the murder.[5]

Members of Judge González’s family have been attacked, and judges and lawyers involved in the case have received death threats. The public prosecutor’s office implicated four former military officers in the crime in 1997[6] and a prosecutor in the case told the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers that “his investigations suggested possible military involvement in the killing.”[7] A witness in one of the proceedings said his gang was paid by the Presidential High Command (EMP) - the same military unit responsible for the murder of Myrna Mack - to kill Judge González. Lieutenant Ochoa Ruiz, whose extradition Judge González had approved in 1994 and who is considered by many to be the intellectual author of the crime, was sentenced in 1999 in an unrelated Guatemalan case to 14 years imprisonment for drug trafficking.

Endnotes

[1] Main sources: Amnesty International (AI), Guatemala’s Lethal Legacy: Past Impunity and Renewed Human Rights Violations, AMR 34/001/2002 (February 2002); Country Reports 1994 to 2001; GHRC/USA, Guatemala Human Rights UPDATE. Vol. 13, No. 11-12 (2001); and MINUGUA Reports A/50/878 (February 1996), A/53/853 (March 1999), and A/55/174 (August 2001).
[2] According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Dato’ Param Cumaraswamy, “widespread complaints [of threats, harassment and intimidation] threatened and undermined the very core of the independence of the judiciary.” Cumaraswamy, Report on the Mission to Guatemala, E/CN.4/2000/61/Add.1 (January 2000), para. 142.
[3] On May 25, 1993, President Serrano dissolved Congress and the high courts, and partially suspended the constitution. By June 5, after Judge González declared Serrano’s actions illegal, Congress had resumed and elected then Human Rights Ombudsman Ramiro de León Carpio to carry out Serrano’s term.
[4] Country Report 1995.
[5]  MINUGUA Report, A/55/174 (July 2000), para. 60.
[6According to AI, despite being named, the “‘narco-military’ officers” remain unpunished. AI, AMR 34/001/2002 (February 2002).
[7] Cumaraswamy, E/CN.4/2000/61/Add.1 (January 2000), para. 58.

U.S. Law & Security | Asylum in the U.S. | Human Rights Defenders | Human Rights Issues | International Justice |
International Refugee Policy | Workers Rights | Media Room | About Us | Contribute | Jobs | Contact Us | Publications | Search | Site Map | Home