MEXICO : An Unsolved Slaying Has Judge’s Worried About Justice

More than a year after Abraham Polo Uscanga was found shot to death on the floor of his son’s downtown office here, police investigators have amassed 16,000 pages of testimony, filling 15 large volumes. More than 600 officials have interviewed dozens of witnesses and grilled possible suspects. There have even been press reports--vigorously denied--that investigators hired a psychic to try to contact the murder victim for information.

Still, one thing that has not happened in the Polo Uscanga case: It hasn’t been solved.

That, Mexican legal experts say, is par for the course in a nation that has yet to solve two far more dramatic 1994 political murders: the assassinations of the presidential candidate from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the party’s second-ranking official.

Polo Uscanga’s killing a year ago last week has focused the outrage of a traditionally silent sector of Mexican society. It is now at the core of a growing sense among Mexican jurists and lawyers that the inability of Mexico’s criminal-justice system to bring murderers to account soon could threaten the stability of the nation itself.

The reason: Abraham Polo Uscanga was a judge.

“We profoundly lament that one year after the incident, there isn’t even one sign of truth that leads to the parties responsible for the death of Polo Uscanga,” said Judge Carlos Vazquez Rangel, a friend and colleague of the victim. “Every day that passes, we grow more certain that they will never appear--that this, like other crimes of the state, will be filed away in the archives of unsolved cases. . . . But if these crimes aren’t resolved, it will result in desperation and it could even disrupt the relative state of peace in Mexico, transforming the political system and the government.”

The Polo Uscanga case is hardly as well known as the assassinations of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and the party’s secretary-general, Francisco Ruiz Massieu.

In those cases, at least the gunmen were arrested, put on trial and sentenced to long jail terms. And even though this much occurred in those two cases, the overwhelming majority of Mexicans--ruling party leaders among them--believe that Colosio and Ruiz Massieu were assassinated as part of conspiracies, yet to be exposed.

Raul Salinas de Gortari, elder brother of the former president, also was arrested and charged with masterminding the killing of Ruiz Massieu; after more than a year of trial proceedings, however, no verdict is in sight in the case.

But in Polo Uscanga’s case, there has not been a single arrest--this, even though his own judicial colleagues have testified that corruption within their own court system played a role in the killing.

For months before his assassination, Polo Uscanga publicly had been accusing the president of his Superior Tribunal in Mexico City’s federal district of extortion and attempting to force him to make unjust rulings.

Days before his death, Polo Uscanga reported receiving death threats.

He left behind a letter saying that, if he were found dead, police should investigate the president of the court.

Investigators say they have exonerated that individual, who since has been forced to resign.

The murder weapon, a .38-caliber Taurus handgun, yielded no clues, they said. And the investigation appears at stalled.

Still, the chief judge’s resignation gives Polo Uscanga’s colleagues some comfort.

“The death of Polo Uscanga brought an end to the president of corruption,” Vazquez said.

“So we think that his sacrifice, his spilled blood, has not been in vain in terms of justice, democracy and liberty.”