that several witnesses would testify that he had been at his market stall at the time of the murder. He had no link to the victim, no motive and no criminal history. The judge, Hector Palomares, found Zúñiga guilty and sentenced him to 20 years behind bars.
A young man’s sudden abduction off the streets of the capital is not unheard of in México. Under intense pressure to solve rising crime, especially by drug gangs, police are sometimes suspected of grabbing and charging the first hapless person they come upon, often a poor person without resources for a defense. Once someone is arrested, everyone in the system, from police to prosecutor to judge to even the court-provided defense attorney, has every motivation to keep the defendant in jail.
The same year Zúñiga was arrested, Hernández and Negrete completed their first courtroom documentary, “El Túnel” (“The Tunnel”), a damning short that stirred debate about reforming México’s constitution to include presumption of innocence. “El Túnel” featured the case of Marco, a young man convicted of stealing a car even though the victim told detectives, prosecutors and judges that the detainee was not the culprit. Marco’s release led Hernández and Negrete to launch Lawyers with Cameras, their crusade to open the Mexican legal process to public scrutiny. It also brought a flood of requests for help, including a plea on behalf of the determined and eloquent Zúñiga, whose case rested on a single eyewitness. But by the time Hernández and Negrete were contacted, Zúñiga had lost his appeal and seemed doomed to spend 20 years in prison.
Hernández and Negrete spent months filming in Iztapalapa, the neighborhood where Zúñiga lived, to verify his alibi. Given the difficulty of documenting cases of wrongful conviction in México and the scarcity of journalistic
...
DPS "on-time" graduation rate rises to 4.3-point gain
Denver Public Schools have increased a four-year "on-time" graduation rate, posting a 4.3-point gain and graduating 175 more students last spring over the previous year, according to data released recently by the Colorado Department of Education. This brings the district's four-year rate from ...
Tucson schools seize Chicano, Native books from classrooms
High school students from the now-forbidden Mexican American Studies classes in Tucson spoke out during Martin Luther King Day on Monday, protesting the school board and state of Arizona's decision to ban their classes and their culture.
Describing the seizure of books from his classrooms, one ...
Will Migrants matter in the Mexican election?
The clock is ticking as the registration deadline fast approaches for Mexican expatriates to vote in their country of origin’s presidential election this year. Although Mexican election officials are confident a late rush of applications will mean greater absentee participation than in the 2006 ...
DPS: $4.8 million to improve college-readiness
Denver Public Schools has been awarded a seven-year grant from the US Department of Education’s Gaining Early Awareness & Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) to support and improve college-readiness programs for students who attend schools in the Northwest Denver community. The $4.8 ...
High school students from the now-forbidden Mexican American Studies classes in Tucson spoke out during Martin Luther King Day on Monday, protesting the school board and state of Arizona's decision to ban their classes and their culture.
Describing the seizure of books from his classrooms, one ...
view more videos
view more photos
Gente de Minesota 
Hoy en Delaware News - 
La Prensa Hispana - Noticias 
La Voz de Dalton El Periódico 
Revista en español para la 
El Semanario New Mexico 