When I came out of jail, the people who were supposed to know something about my case (my lawyer at the time, the police) told me that the whole process would take “from three to six months”; since the beginning of 2018 that turned into “a maximum of three months”; only when courts of law were closed because of the pandemics at the end of March 2020, it was stated officially that it could take longer, depending on the sanitary situation.
Suddenly, on August 4, it was confirmed that on August 6 the arguments would start before a newly appointed judge. Such judge is the only one among all who have been in charge of the case who has followed the order of the high court to finish the case as soon as possible (which exist since 2015), and he will pronounce the judgment on September 11. More than eight years waiting without a real tentative date, and suddenly I came to know that my trial would most probably end in two or three weeks (which actually turned into five, but again, I only came to know the date of the judgment on August 27). In two weeks I had to organize my whole life, because if I am given a conviction I would be taken directly from court to jail.
Before the trial
The police took 10 months to deliver the Charge Sheet, and I received the file more than 11 months after my arrest. In that moment I was made aware of two serious situations. The first one is that almost all the evidence presented against me is put up (that is, fake); additionally, it is not strong evidence at all, but I already expected that. The second situation is the following:
From some statements by the mother of Cécile Denise Acosta Reynaud before the Mexican press (Reforma; September 30, 2012), I came to know that the Embassy of Mexico in India had given her some documents related to the case. I asked for such documents through Dirección General de Protección a Mexicanos en el Exterior, dependant on the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the embassy sent them to me. Upon receiving such documents, I immediately noticed that the photograph of Cécile used for the cranial superimposition test was completely deformed, to the point that at first sight I believed it to be the photograph of another person. The most remarkable is that it matched perfectly the skull taken from the corpse found by the police, and that in the report of the cranial superimposition test are mentioned several physical characteristics, which seem to be present in the deformed image but do not correspond at all with those of Cécile. It seemed very strange to me that the mother of Cécile, who had exactly the same document, as she states in the press article mentioned above, had not said anything regarding such enormous discrepancy, but I thought that she might not had read the report yet.
I mentioned the fact to the person who was my lawyer at that time. Soon afterwards, for several reasons, I decided to engage another lawyer and to leave that one. When I finally received the file (that is, xerox copies of it), it turned out that the image of the photograph used in the cranial superimposition test was completely darkened, to the point that it was absolutely impossible to distinguish anything in it; it was just a black rectangle. I requested a clear xerox copy of that page of the file; the court took more than one year to deliver it and, when I finally got the new image, it was as dark as the previous one. It is remarkable that the first copy of the image given to me is so dark, since the original image in the file is not specially dark at all; but the fact that the second copy, requested specifically because the first one was too dark, is also absolutely indistinguishable, definitely turns out to be suspicious.
Once the (copy of the) file was given to me, my case was transferred from the Municipal Court (Lower Court) to the District Court (Sessions Court), since the former does not have the jurisdiction to judge serious cases. It originally arrived to the First Additional Sessions Court, and from there it was transferred to the Special Court For Crimes Against Women. However, such court was vacant, so I had hearings in another court. Finally, the judge of the latter, who was temporarily in charge of the cases in the Special Court For Crimes Against Women, decided to start my trial. Since my arrest, 27 months had already elapsed (which include the time I was in jail, the time the police took to deliver the Charge Sheet to the court, the time the court took to give me a copy of the file, and the time the court took to replace one black image with another black image).
In the following link can be appreciated the Charge Sheet as it was given to me. As can be noticed, page numbering is not always proper and some pages are missing (for example, the petrol bunk bill which is part of the prosecution evidence does not appear):
Trial
In India, judges are constantly transferred from one court to another, usually in a different district. The main reason for such measure is to prevent corruption. Although it is somehow successful on that regard, it also has the disadvantage that every judge must (or should, at least) study all ongoing cases in the new court at each transfer.
The judge who started my trial (in July 2014) called more than half of the witnesses of the prosecution in about a month. If he had conducted the whole trial, it is probable that it would actually have taken around three months since the moment it began.
However, in August 2014 a judge was assigned to the Special Court For Crimes Against Women. This judge took more than one year to call the remaining witnesses of the prosecution, with the exception of foreign witnesses and the accusing officer, who is always the last one to be called. Moreover, the prosecution submitted a petition to re-examine all witnesses, without stating any grounds to do that, and the judge decided to rather order a retrial, that is, to start the process again and disregard all previous depositions. He did not even have the jurisdiction to do that. The defense appealed at the High Court, and that judges who allowed such appeal even talked about “witch hunt”.
I cannot positively state that this judge was bribed, because I do not have any hard evidence to prove it, but there is no doubt that his behavior was extremely partial against me, in addition to showing his very poor knowledge of the law. He was in charge of the case from August 2014 to February or March 2016.
This judge then retired, and the Special Court For Crimes Against Women was left vacant again. The judge of another court was appointed to be in charge of those cases. The prosecution submitted a petition to re-examine ten witnesses, without presenting any valid grounds to do so. The judge allowed the petition when no member of the defense was present, and called those witnesses immediately, therefore preventing us to appeal at the High Court. The witnesses were re-examined by the prosecution, but only partially by the defense. The behavior of this judge was also extremely partial against me, although I do not have any proof to show he was bribed. He was in charge of the case from February or March to September 2016, more or less.
Then there was finally assigned a judge to the Special Court For Crimes Against Women. The defense finished to cross-examine the recalled witnesses. Only the foreign witnesses and the investigation officer remained to be examined, but at that point the prosecution submitted a petition to add more documents to the file the case: More than 200 pages completely disorganized, with no official guaranty of validity, and unrelated to the case; additionally, several of the documents included were incomplete or had been tampered with. The judge dismissed the petition. The prosecution submitted a new, more organized version, but the judge dismissed it as well, since the documents were not related to the case. Then the prosecution said it had appealed to the High Court, but remarkably such alleged appeal took more than six months to be attended. Why did it take so long? When the defense has appealed to the High Court, the whole process has never taken more than three weeks.
Finally, the High Court decided that only one document was to be accepted (the legal agreement between Cécile and me, which the defense also wanted to add to the file), and the others should be rejected. It was stated that the prosecution must submit another petition to the judge at the District Court specifically for such document. Then the prosecution appealed to the Supreme Court; the appeal was rejected but that took another two months.
After that, the prosecution submitted a petition to add not only the document accepted by the High Court but another one, too: the false denounce of violence Cécile had made against me when I warned her that, if she kept on beating our daughter, I would inform the authorities. The defense accepted both documents because we feared that, if we did not, they would claim to have appealed to the High Court and that would prolong the process further six months or even more, and then they would appeal to the Supreme Court. My economic situation during all his time has not been good, and it worsens as time goes by, since I do not have a job nor a work permit. For the Supreme Court (situated in Delhi, the capital of the country) I must engage another lawyer… That is why we decided to accept the second petition, even if it includes a document that does not favor me (although, not being related to the case, it is of minor importance).
The trial seemed to be close to its end, but it turned out that the funds intended for the travel expenses of the Mexican witnesses (the mother and one of the brothers of Cécile), which the court had given more than one year before to the police, had not been handed over to the prosecution by the police, so those witnesses could not be called immediately. The judge ordered to hurry up such administrative procedure, but nevertheless it took several months to be accomplished.
The performance of this judge was fully according to law, with the exception of following the order of the High Court stating that the trial should end in a maximum of six months. Since she was close to retirement and had a lot of days of license accumulated throughout her whole career, she was frequently absent, sometimes for long periods. She was in charge of the case from September 2016 to March or April 2018.
Upon the retirement of this judge, the Special Court For Crimes Against Women was left vacant again. Its cases were put in charge of another judge, who conducted mine for four or five months, while we waited for the police to deliver to the prosecution the funds intended for the travel expenses of the Mexican witnesses, and then she was transferred. My case was left in charge of another judge, with whom I had a single hearing, but she was transferred as well.
The Special Court For Crimes Against Women was still vacant. Another judge was put in charge of the cases in that court. Before such judge were examined the mother of Cécile Denise Acosta Reynaud (the prosecution finally decided not to examine her brother) and the investigation officer, who is the person formally accusing me. This judge was knowledgeable in law matters and was very careful regarding his career, but he tried to damage me as much as he could within such boundaries:
He threatened to revoke my bail because I had recorded my own trial, which is not forbidden and lies within my rights. He finally did not, to protect his career and his name, but added a document to the file of the case stating that I had tried to tamper with the witnesses (allegedly, for having recorded them). The truth is that he wanted to modify their depositions, as he actually did but in a very subtle way: the mother of Cécile stated at court that the investigation officer had told her that I have cut Cécile’s throat. Since this does not agree neither with the Charge Sheet nor with the postmortem, it shows that the police lied to the mother of Cécile to put her against me (unless she lied at court regarding the aspect, as she did regarding others). The judge, knowing that I had been recording, only omitted “the inspector told me” and then enclosed the rest of the statement in parenthesis. That is not enough to accuse the judge of having altered the deposition of the witness, but it does change completely the implications of such statement, which just remains as a somewhat strange parenthesis within the deposition.
After the examination of the investigating officer, the judge delayed the next step, which is my questioning, for almost 2 months, until he was transferred. It would seem that he was trying to avoid judging me, since he could not give me a conviction without damaging his own career. I cannot positively state that he was bribed, but his behavior was extremely suspicious: very partial against me when he could, and then prolonging the process so that he would not pronounce the judgment. This judge was in charge of the case since September or October 2018 till the end of April 2019.
In May 2019, a judge was finally assigned to the Special Court For Crimes Against Women. She proceeded immediately with my questioning. However, she was paying so little attention to it that she skipped a question, so that more than half my answers did not correspond to the question I had given them to, without she even realizing that something was amiss (the person actually reading the questions to me was a court clerk). When the document was given to me for signing, I could confirm the mistake (I had noticed it when it happened, but I was not completely sure). The judge was notified of this fact and corrected the document.
The defense called only two witnesses. One was the principal of the school where our daughter used to study, to confirm that the final examinations had taken place from 4 to 18 April 2012, and that our daughter had been assisting to school every day until April 16. The other was a representative of Yahoo! India to confirm the existence of the emails where Cécile and I organize the holidays of our daughter. Those emails are endorsed under a notary public, translated by a translator appointed by the Mexican Supreme Court, and apostilled, but even then the prosecution did not accept them, so a representative of Yahoo! was needed.
When we finally managed a representative of Yahoo! India to appear in court, he stated he lacked jurisdiction to endorse those emails, since my account belonged to Yahoo! USA. The defense then asked Yahoo! USA to send an official document endorsing the emails, but even after two formal requests by Madurai District Court, we never got a reply.
After several months, in February 2020, the judge ordered to proceed with the arguments. At the end of February, the prosecution finished its initial argument and submitted a written version of it. The defense took some additional time because of an unfortunate situation not related with the case, and the very day appointed for the defense to begin its arguments, all courts were closed because of the epidemics.
After little more than four months, the courts were reopened. The judge had been transferred, and another one had been appointed to the Special Court For Crimes Against Women. The prosecution began its argument before the new judge on August 6; it finished on August 14, and submitted a second written version. On the same day, the defense started its own, to finish it on August 19, when it submitted the written version. The prosecution replied on August 24, and submitted the written version of such reply on August 27. The defense replied on the same day, with which that phase of the trial came to an end. The judgment will be pronounced on September 11.
Argumentación-Fiscalía-1/First Prosecution Argument
Argumentación-fiscalía-2/Second Prosecution Argument
Argumentación-Defensa/Defense Argument
Respuesta-fiscalía/Reply by the Prosecution
I was found guilty of murder, in spite of the fact that in the Judgement itself it is stated that the story of the Prosecution cannot be true.
After one year in jail I was released on bail (suspension of sentence), while my appeal is decided.
Suspensión de sentencia/Suspension of Sentence
However, when I went to sign at court one week later as required by the bail order, the Inspector of Police, Austinpatti (where my case currently lies) said she wanted to ask me some questions and, as soon as I was alone with her and her team, I was forcefully taken to a “special camp”, which is a jail but slightly less restrictive.
After more than three years in the Special Camp, my appeal to the High Court was decided. The bench of two judges considered as acceptable much of the evidence that my lawyer had shown to be inadmisible, and that the District Court judge had accepted as not valid. They even take into account an element that even the police does not consider: the tyre marks allegedly found near the body and my car’s tyres do not match, but these two judges state that they do.
However, they consider that it is clear that it was not planned, so they reduce my sentence to four years.
Adding the time that I have spent in the Special Camp, it is more than seven years. Plus the more than eight years I was not in detention, but I was not allowed to leave the country and I did not have a work permit, I was alone without family or friends.
I really cannot understand how a bench of two High Court judges can proceed in this way without having any consequences.
Veredicto de la apelación/Appeal Judgement
In the following document, I comment some points from the appeal judgment. Compare with the arguments and the judgment by the District Court.