Murder Charge Dropped in Alleged Mexico Rape Attempt

Prosecutors have dropped a murder charge against a woman who says she shot and killed a man because he was trying to rape her--a case closely watched by women’s rights groups around the world.

“This is a great achievement,” one of Claudia Rodriguez’s attorneys, Ana Laura Magaloni, said Saturday.

Prosecutor Victor Hugo Blancas dropped the charge in papers filed Friday during final arguments in the case. He did not comment on his decision. The state still claims that Rodriguez used excessive force in her defense, a crime that carries a sentence of from three days to seven years in prison.

Judge Carlos Cruz Preciado is to rule within two weeks. Rodriguez has at least two possible appeals if the judge rules against her.

Women’s groups in and out of Mexico have rallied around the working-class mother of five, claiming that her case demonstrates a double standard of justice in Mexico that discriminates against women.

Rodriguez, confined behind bars and a glass screen, chain-smoked Friday while her defense lawyers argued that she was justified in killing her attacker.

The one-hour proceeding was barely audible over the clatter of manual typewriters, murmurs and bawling babies in a crowded prison courtroom in Texcoco, about 30 miles east of Mexico City.

Defense attorney Roberto Martinez contended that Rodriguez, 30, had no choice but to shoot Juan Miguel Cabrera, 27, when he followed her and a woman friend from a bar where the three had spent the night dancing and drinking.

The women said Cabrera followed them from the bar, suggested they go to a hotel, made lewd suggestions--then started ripping at Rodriguez’s clothes.

She shot him once with a .22-caliber pistol.

Rodriguez has testified that she resisted Cabrera’s advances and tried to warn him away but that he attacked her, telling her something like, “No woman has ever gotten away from me.”

Women’s groups demonstrated outside the prison Friday, holding banners reading “We’re here for Claudia.”

The slain man’s widow, Claudia Pedroza Lopez, watched the hearing from the edge of the crowd.

“Of course she is guilty of homicide. She deprived him of his life,” she said. “Much is said of the fact that she has five children. Well, he had two children.”