Just how did the president of Jalisco’s Supreme Court – who last week offered his resignation – end up in his job after serving a prison term for homicide three decades earlier?
It’s a question most ordinary citizens are struggling to fathom.
Luis Carlos Vega Panames served just four months of a four-year sentence after agreeing to pay “compensation” to a woman he admitted running over and killing 32 years ago.
In his letter soliciting a leave of absence, Vega Panames called the “accident” an “ill-advised incident” for which he paid the price. However, he made no reference – or apology – about the police and newspaper reports at the time that said together with an accomplice he had previously stolen the car at gunpoint and engaged in an exchange of gunfire with police officers.
“I paid my debt for this painful error made when I was 20 years old,” Vega Panames wrote. “There are second opportunities and I took mine.”
But how he was subsequently able to rise to the pinnacle of Jalisco’s legal system is baffling. By law, no one with a criminal record is permitted to sit on any judicial bench in the state.
Following his “error” in 1984 and brief spell in prison, Vega Panames finished his law degree and rose up the ranks of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), becoming part of a close circle presided over by Leonel Sandoval, a magistrate and father of the current Jalisco governor. At one point he served as police chief in Puerto Vallarta.
Remarkably, Vega Panames’ past proved to be no barrier when he was nominated to serve on the Supreme Court bench in 2006. The “gifting” of top posts to loyal party members is characteristic of the way the PRI has operated for decades.
Contacted by local media, legislators who served on the Jalisco Congress’ Justice Commission at that time said they detected no discrepancies when they revised Vega Panames’ documents during his ratification process.
And six years later, in 2012, he was appointed president of the court.
After the scandal broke late last month, investigators from the Fiscalia General del Estado (state Attorney General’s Office) were unable to locate Vega Panames’ case file in the Puente Grande prison archives. Some reports suggested a lock had been forced to facilitate its removal.
Eventually found, the file verified that Vega Panames was only convicted of “imprudent homicide,” and that prosecutors mysteriously dropped all the other charges that would have merited a longer prison sentence.
“We knew he had guns, was in a stolen car and had just held up a jewelry store,” Alicia Salazar Guzmán, the now grown-up daughter of María Dolores Guzmán, Vega Panames’ victim, told Guadalajara daily Mural last week. One of eight siblings, the 16-year-old arrived at the scene of the accident in Colonia Atlas to learn that her mother had been knocked down along with another woman – who survived – and trapped in the front bumper of the car Vega Panames and his accomplice had stolen. She died as she was dragged along the road when the 20-year-old tried to escape his pursuers.
The now disgraced judge was detained at the scene. Salazar Guzmán said she screamed at him but he “looked out of it” and was probably drugged or drunk.
In the wake of the scandal, opposition politicians have called for a complete review of the process of naming judges in Jalisco.
Shortly prior to his resignation, Vega Panames had been accused of attempting to subvert the course of justice by interceding with the Guadalajara municipal police chief on behalf of a car salesman “friend” who employed two men who had been detained outside a bank by municipal police. They were both later found to be in possession of weapons. The conversation was recorded and led to calls for Vega Panames to step down and face justice.
Local newspaper reports have suggested that Vega Panames has purchased a significant amount of property during his spell as a Supreme Court judge. Given the high salaries of the magistrates, this should not necessarily been regarded as suspicious.
A new Supreme Court president will be chosen in December.