Duda-Razonable
Héctor Muñoz Muñoz, Gonzalo García Hernández, and Juan Luis López García celebrate with their lawyer after having their conviction overturned. Photo by: Juan Peregrino

Three wrongfully convicted men whose story WJP highlighted earlier this year are now free in Mexico.  

On December 7, Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Gonzalo García Hernández, Juan Luis López García and Héctor Muñoz Muñoz were unjustly convicted of attempted kidnapping and sentenced to 50 years in prison. Deprived of their freedom since 2015, the men were immediately released following the ruling. 

Filmmaker and former WJP researcher Roberto Hernandez brought global attention to the men’s case, following their uphill fight for justice in his 2021 Netflix docuseries Reasonable Doubt: A Tale of Two Kidnappings.  Hernandez met the men while he was conducting research surveys of incarcerated people in Tabasco as part of a pilot study for WJP.   

“The men are free, I am very happy,” Hernandez told WJP. “It is widely recognized that this kind of injustice is all too frequent. This was a great culmination of seven years of work.” 

The Supreme Court ruled that the three men’s human rights were violated, finding that instead of presuming them innocent, as is required by the constitution, the original trial court presumed them guilty.  The court also found the prosecution was based on inconsistent victim testimony that was not corroborated with evidence.  According to news reports, one of the justices noted that innocent people are often convicted in Mexico, and that the Supreme Court must not be complicit.  

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