Capt Steve
US Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2008
- Messages
- 1,678
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One of the great myths today is you can simply flee to Mexico to avoid prosecution here in the US. Unfortunately it isn't true. Mexico doesn't want you and will go to great lengths to release you to the US. In the meantime you sit in a Mexican prison. Interesting place, a Mexican prison. Unless you have someone providing you with food, blankets etc., and most important, money you mostly rot there. If you speak Spanish and can hustle you might just get by but it is no place for a gringo.
I wish the US would work as hard at returning Mexican criminals as Mexico does at returning ours. The one exception is if you are facing the death penalty which Mexico does not have or endorse. In that case you stay in a Mexican prison...and rot there. While Mexican laws have only recently begun to change from the old Napoleonic system of you are guilty until proven innocent, and improvements in the accused rights are on the horizon, these changes are coming very slowly. Even more slowly for gringos.
About 10 years ago while on a delivery from Cabo to the San Diego the owner of the boat lost his best friend overboard in a remote, isolated anchorage, known for drug smuggling. No witnesses and no trace of the body was ever found despite a massive air/sea/shore search. His family, multimillionaires with lots of political juice, said it was murder in the first. Despite not even being on the boat at the time my crew and I were treated as suspects. We spent thirteen days chained to the dock in Cabo while every cop in the pueblo and the DA himself crawled all over the boat at will, at all hours. After a couple of Senators/Congressmen, the FBI and the US Consulate got involved the Mexican authorities released the boat to me, (and believe me they were NOT happy about it!). My buddy and I bashed up the Baja over the next ten days - think the not so perfect storm for 6 of them. We arrived in San Diego to be greeted by US Customs, complete with drug sniffing dog, USCG Special investigations Team along with the FBI.
Eighteen months later after three requests under the Freedom of Information Act the Justice Department finally released their report to me, all 355 pages. They had gone to the US Attorney seeking a murder indictment against the boat owner and named my crew and I as co-conspirators. It was rejected for lack of evidence.
I still think it was a careless accident and nothing more but then I wasn't on scene when it went down. If the supposed dead guy ever turns up we all will have "a lot of splaining to do" as the case was dismissed without prejudice.
A couple of months later a gringo called the widow claiming he had seen the missing man in Cabo and would lead her to him for $5,000. Unfortunately for him the FBI had a wiretap on her phone and set up a sting with the Mexican authorities. He was last seen in Mexican custody being led out of a bar in Cabo where the meet had been set up.
Sorry for the felony thread drift but until you have spent a few weeks in a third world country, presumed guilty of a capitol crime it is hard to imagine the consequences of "fleeing to Mexico" being a solution to a US judicial problem.
Some day I am going to finish this tale as a novel suitable for B movie. As Peewee Herman said "I lived it!"
