Brother Protests Officer’s Sentence

A little over two weeks after a Mexican policeman was sentenced for the killing of Mario Amado of North Hollywood, Amado’s brother protested Friday that the officer’s 8 1/2-year prison sentence is too short.

“He should have gotten 25 years to life--that’s what he would have gotten in this country,” said Joe Amado, a Shadow Hills resident, outside the Mexican consulate near downtown Los Angeles.

Three and a half years ago, Amado’s 29-year-old brother, Mario, was arrested for alleged disorderliness while on vacation in the Mexican beach resort town of Rosarito just south of Tijuana.

Mario Amado died in jail. Mexican police said he had hanged himself with his sweater but Joe Amado established in independent medical tests that his brother had been severely beaten and strangled with a rope.

On Jan. 11, a Tijuana judge sentenced Rosarito policeman Jose Antonio Verduzco Flores to prison for intentional homicide in Mario Amado’s death.

On Friday, Joe Amado presented a consular official with a letter he had written to Hector Teran Teran, the governor of Baja California, asking that Teran instruct the state’s attorney general to review Verduzco’s sentence.

The letter starts off by saying the Amado family is grateful for the Mexican judge’s punishment of Verduzco, but continues: “However, the sentence imposed, eight-and-a-half years with time served of two-and-a-half years . . . makes that victory seem almost hollow.”

An attorney for the policeman has said he would appeal that sentence, arguing that Verduzco was not even on duty at the jail when Amado died, and was framed for the killing. Joe Amado’s years of persistent campaigning made the case politically sensitive, especially after he got a U.S. congressman to involve the Mexican president’s office in the search for a killer.

Amado, who used to be in the import business, displayed the same blend of naivete and media sophistication Friday that he has during his years-long struggle to bring his brother’s killer to justice. As reporters whom he had invited to the conference began to gather on the sidewalk, he presented the letter--handwritten on notebook paper--to the consular official, Miguel Escobar Valdez.

Escobar, the consul for media affairs, promised to deliver the letter to the Baja California state government. He said he did not know the legal process by which the state could amend the sentence.

Asked to assess Amado’s chances of getting a longer sentence for the convicted policeman, the consul answered carefully.

“I don’t know about the chances. I’m sure Mr. Amado will make every effort to bring attention to this case,” he said.

For his part, Amado said he is an optimist, and for that reason believes he may be able to get the sentence lengthened--which can be done by appeals courts, under the Mexican legal system.

He is forging ahead with his lonely struggle, he said, “to show everybody that you can achieve justice if you fight long enough.”