Edgar Jiménez Lugo was 14 years old when soldiers detained him in the central Mexican state of Morelos on December 2, 2010. He had been born in San Diego, California, and was a citizen of the United States, but he had grown up in Morelos, and it was there that he was tried. In July 2011, after an eight-day oral trial held behind closed doors, the state's specialized court for adolescents found him guilty of homicide in the deaths of four men in Cuernavaca in August 2010, together with kidnapping, organized crime, drug offenses and an offense under the federal arms law. On July 26, 2011, the court ordered him held for three years.
That was the longest measure the law of Morelos allowed a court to impose on a minor, and both the court and the prosecution said so on the day it was announced. Mexican authorities said the boy had worked for the South Pacific cartel, a faction that grew out of the Beltrán Leyva organization, and he told federal prosecutors that he had been forced into its service at the age of 11. The case had begun as a question of who would try him, the federal government or the state, and it ended with a fixed ceiling that no one in the courtroom had the power to raise. He left the state's juvenile detention center in the early hours of November 26, 2013, a few days before the term formally expired, and was flown from Mexico City to the United States. He was 17.
Jiménez Lugo was born in San Diego and raised in Morelos, the state south of Mexico City whose capital is Cuernavaca. At the time of his arrest he carried a birth certificate issued in San Diego, and the governor of Morelos asked that his immigration status be checked. For several days in December 2010 neither government would say for certain which country he belonged to: an official at the United States Embassy said American officials had not yet confirmed his citizenship, while Morelos officials looked into whether he held dual nationality.
The question was settled in his favor. By the time of his sentencing he was described in Mexico and the United States alike as an American citizen, and when he was released in 2013 the embassy in Mexico City declined to discuss his case on the ground that it did not publicly discuss matters involving United States citizens. His nationality did not alter the forum. He was tried by a state court in Morelos under the state's law for adolescents, and he served his sentence in the state's juvenile detention system.
The convictions rest on the deaths of four men in Cuernavaca in August 2010. Mexican authorities said the boy worked for the South Pacific cartel, and the case against him treated the four deaths as acts carried out within that organization. The prosecution joined the homicides to kidnapping under a single organized-crime charge, which accused him of belonging to a criminal group for the purpose of committing kidnappings and intentional homicides. The juvenile court's finding of guilt in July 2011 covered all four deaths.
Soldiers detained Jiménez Lugo in Morelos on Thursday, December 2, 2010. The state government confirmed the arrest in a statement, and the case at once became a dispute over jurisdiction. The governor of Morelos said publicly that the crimes alleged against the boy fell under both federal and state law and were tied to organized crime, and he asked that the federal Attorney General's Office, the Procuraduría General de la República, take the case.
Federal prosecutors did take custody of him for a time. He was handed to them, and in their presence he said that he had taken part in four killings while under the influence of drugs and under threat. He also said that the organization had recruited him at 11, under a threat to his life. Those were the statements that defined the case in public in the weeks that followed, and they were made in the custody of federal agents, without any court having yet heard evidence.
The jurisdictional question was decided in Morelos. A judge in the state held a hearing that lasted most of a day on whether the federal government should handle the case because of the gravity of the allegations, and ruled that Morelos would try him. The decision turned on a gap in Mexican law at the time: there was no federal system of justice for minors, so a child accused even of federal offenses had to be tried in a state court. From December 2010 he was held in the state's juvenile detention center while the prosecution prepared its case.
The charges were brought by the specialized prosecutor's office for adolescents within the Morelos attorney general's office, the Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado de Morelos. As formally framed, they combined three strands. The first was a set of offenses against health, the Mexican legal term for drug crimes. The second was an offense under the federal arms law, in the category reserved for the army, navy and air force. The third was organized crime, defined in the charge as membership in a criminal group for the purpose of committing kidnappings and intentional homicides. In the shorthand that officials used when they announced the result, he was tried for organized crime, homicide, kidnapping and the drug and arms offenses.
The juvenile court that heard the case was the Tribunal Unitario de Justicia para Adolescentes, known by its initials as TUJA. Its spokesman said before the trial that about 60 witnesses and experts would be called and that the hearing might last one to two weeks; the court had earlier indicated that up to 65 people might testify. The defense was in the hands of public defenders from the state's office of court-appointed counsel.
The oral trial opened on the morning of July 18, 2011. It was held not in a courthouse but inside the state's juvenile detention center, where the defendant had been held since December, and it was closed to the public. Little of what passed inside the hearing room became known while the trial was under way, and what did emerge came through the court's administrative office and through lawyers once the sessions ended.
The prosecution carried the burden through its witness list. By July 20, after three days of hearings, 30 of the 65 witnesses the prosecution intended to call had testified, among them medical examiners and federal agents. The court's administrator explained the stages that remained: the close of the evidence for both sides, closing arguments, deliberation, the verdict, the sanction and its formal reading. He did not rule out that the hearing would run into the following week.
The defense took a narrower course. The public defenders assigned to the boy said they did not intend to call any witnesses, and they called none. The trial lasted eight days in all.
On Tuesday, July 26, 2011, the court found Jiménez Lugo guilty. The Morelos attorney general's office announced the finding, which covered four crimes, among them the homicide of the four men. The prosecutor for adolescents told reporters that the court had imposed the maximum sentence the law allowed for a minor in Morelos, three years, and a spokesman for the court confirmed that three years was the ceiling. The sentence was to be served in a juvenile detention center in the state.
When he was released in 2013, the offenses for which he had been sanctioned were given formally as offenses against health, the federal arms-law offense, and violation of the federal law against organized crime with the purpose of committing kidnapping and intentional homicide.
He served the sentence in the state's juvenile detention system in Morelos. The state's secretary of government, who spoke about the case on the day of his release, said that in his last months there he had received psychological care through the court for adolescents.
The term was due to end on December 2, 2013, three years to the day after his arrest. A judge brought the release forward by several days. Jiménez Lugo left the detention center in the early hours of Tuesday, November 26, 2013, and was moved under a security escort to the office of Mexico's National Migration Institute in Cuernavaca, and from there to the international airport in Mexico City, where he boarded a flight to the United States. The secretary of government confirmed the release and said that the young man would be placed in a support center intended to help him return to society. In Texas he was to enter a residential program whose name the Mexican authorities did not know.
The United States Embassy in Mexico City said it was coordinating closely with Mexican authorities and with the appropriate authorities in the United States over the release, and that, because of privacy considerations, it did not publicly discuss the details of matters involving American citizens. He did not appear to face any charge in the United States.
The account of how a boy came to be convicted of four homicides rests in large part on his own words. His statements that he was recruited at 11 under a threat to his life, and that he took part in the killings under the influence of drugs and under threat, were made in federal custody shortly after his arrest. The trial was closed, the defense called no witnesses, and those claims were not tested in any public hearing.
The court's finding is the limit of what was proved. The juvenile court found him guilty of homicide in the deaths of four men, with kidnapping, organized crime, drug offenses and an arms-law offense. No other death was the subject of a charge or a finding against him.
August 2010: Four men die in Cuernavaca, Morelos; the deaths later form the homicide charge.
December 2, 2010: Soldiers detain Edgar Jiménez Lugo in Morelos.
December 3, 2010: The governor of Morelos asks the federal Attorney General's Office to take the case.
December 2010: After a hearing, a judge in Morelos rules that the state will try him; he is held in the state's juvenile detention center.
July 18, 2011: The oral trial opens before the Morelos court for adolescents (TUJA).
July 20, 2011: Thirty of 65 prosecution witnesses have testified; the defense calls none.
July 26, 2011: He is found guilty and ordered held for three years, the state maximum for a minor.
November 26, 2013: He is released, several days before the term ends on December 2, and flown from Mexico City to the United States.