What Happens when Jaime Esparza Makes the Mexicans do his Job?

On February 21, 2007, I blogged about a report that had come out saying:
1) Agustin Banda was accused of hitting and killing Schuyler Thomas on the side of U.S. 54 North at Hondo Pass and then failing to stop and render aid.
2) Banda is accused of having fled to Mexico;
3) El Paso DA Esparza has asked the Mexican authorities to prosecute, not extradite but to prosecute, Banda for crimes alleged to have been committed in El Paso against a person in El Paso, Texas (Schuyler Thomas).
4) The Mexican authorities have Banda in custody.

In my blog I discussed how is it that we have a DA who does not think it is important enough to extradite someone who he has accused of killing a member of our community when he has the power to extradite and we pay for him to do so. I raised the question of how much will the Mexicans care about bringing to justice one of their own for a crime he didn't commit in Mexico or against a Mexican. And why should the Mexican D.A. care when the D.A. in El Paso won't even fill out the paperwork to have him extradited? I also asked how Mr. Esparza could justify his personal secretary getting tens of thousands of dollars in supplemental pay and trips to Mexico City ostensibly to "do extraditions."

Many lawyers approached me at the court house yesterday and the day before who had read my blog and were appalled by all this. One lawyer had a brilliant observation. He said think about how the witnesses who are all in El Paso are now going to have to travel to Mexican territory to testify. The witnesses would be the family of the deceased, the police officers who investigated, the medical examiner who did the autopsy... In addition to traveling to Mexican territory and losing that time from protecting the citizens of El Paso, the police officers cannot carry their guns to Mexico. Also keep in mind that Mexico is just now introducing the jury system, an improvement to their legal system, modeled on the American jury system (this is with the help of judges like Alex Gonzalez of County Court Number Four). Will the witnesses from here be facing a jury in Mexico, a jury of Mr. Banda's peers and not their own? Juarez is about twice the size of El Paso City. Its crime rate is higher and its infrastructure more taxed. It is a poor city crushed by migrants moving north. Remember Juarez is a community now known around the world for being the grave site of 400 bodies of dead women and no one knows who killed them or how they got there.

One dead American in the United States vs. 400 dead Mexicans in Mexico. I don't think the Mexican authorities are going to be too worried about our problems. Does Esparza really think they are going to be? Or is he counting on the fact that they won't?

One attorney even asked me, "I wonder who Agustin Banda is related to--Amy Lujan? It's strange how Banda is not getting extradited?"

Other comments were:
1) If that were my family member dead on the side of the road I would be screaming to the press to go after Esparza;
2) How come we have to read on your blog about the importance of this issue? Where is the press outrage?
3) You’re going to do more on Esparza's secretary Amy Lujan getting paid all that money to do extraditions and then she doesn't do them, right?
4) I had no idea Esparza justified paying that Lujan what he does by saying she does extraditions. She is not a lawyer. How come nobody says anything?

Stay tuned.