How an innocent man wound up dead

in El Salvadors justice system

MS-13 gang members languish in one of the three 'gang cages

in the Quezaltepeque police station in 2013 in San Salvador, El
Salvador. These overcrowded cages were designed to be 72-hour
holding cells for common criminals and rival gangs. (Giles
Clarke/Getty Images)

By Sarah Esther Maslin March 16 at 4:53

PM
SAN JUAN TALPA, El Salvador On a dusky evening last spring,
Jorge Alberto Martnez Chvez was tossed into the hell that is El
Salvadors prison system: a holding cell barely bigger than the
bed of a pickup, where more than 50 prisoners were crammed
together, some on the sweat-soaked floor and others spilling out
of thin hammocks crisscrossed from ground to ceiling.

The air was hot and humid, and prisoners half-naked bodies
reeked of urine and ulcers from a recent outbreak of bacteria,
according to a guard. A few weeks later, Martnez collapsed,
foaming at the mouth. He was the fifth inmate from that cell to
die in four months.

He never should have been there in the first place. Police,

prosecutors and a judge mistook him for a different Jorge Alberto
Martnez Chvez, a man eight years younger with a gang tattoo
across his chest and a criminal history that includes charges of
extortion, illegal gun possession and murder.

Martnezs death exposes deep flaws in El Salvadors justice

system, with implications that go well beyond this tiny nation of 6
million. At a time when thousands of Central Americans
are fleeing toward the United States, and border control is at the
top of President Trumps agenda, the weaknesses of this regions
courts and cops have assumed outsize importance. The same
institutions that allowed an innocent man to die have failed to
prevent street gangs from turning the country into one of the
most violent in the hemisphere.
 The U.S. government has spent
hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to help Central
American countries capture and prosecute gang leaders and
corrupt officials.
Although there have been some advances, the system remains
dysfunctional. Police in El Salvador frequently dont use forensic
evidence, prosecutors handle several hundred cases at once, and
prisons are so bad that the Supreme Court has ruled them
unconstitutional.

The combination of these failings during a crackdown in the

streets and a lockdown in the prisons was fatal for Jorge Alberto
Martnez Chvez, 37, a bus dispatcher, volunteer first-responder
and father of two with little in common with the fugitive
authorities sought.

His only sin was having the same name, said public defender
Sal Snchez.

A chain ending in death

The crime that would land Martnez in jail occurred in October
2014 in San Pedro Masahuat, a town with cobblestone streets in
the region of La Paz an hour southeast of San Salvador. Five men
with guns ambushed a sixth man, who ducked behind cars to
avoid the bullets. He survived, and later described his assailants
to prosecutor Guillermo Molina: four low-level gang members and
a leader called Wisper.

The victim knew Wispers name: Jorge Chvez. He had an idea

where he lived a sheet-metal shack on the edge of town and
his age: about 26. Chvez was covered in gang tattoos, including
MS (for Mara Salvatrucha) across his chest and an eagle on
his back.

The prosecutors investigation was based almost entirely on the

victims testimony. This is common in El Salvador. Despite U.S.-led
efforts to introduce scientific evidence to the judicial system
starting during El Salvadors 1980-1992 civil war and continuing
with the current Alliance for Prosperity aid package, which
includes a $4 million forensic training program reform has been
sluggish, according to legal scholars and watchdog groups.

The legal system was created to serve the oligarchy, and

continues to favor the rich and powerful, said anthropologist Juan
Jos Martnez. These days, corrupt business executives and
politicians often escape scrutiny while gang violence overwhelms
police and prosecutors.
Authorities in San Pedro Masahuat caught the four lower-level
gang members but couldnt find the notorious Wisper. They
photographed his house but, according to the case file, didnt do
much else to locate him.
Prosecutors needed more details, so they consulted a federal
database of citizens and learned of a 37-year-old man named
Jorge Alberto Martnez Chvez. A week later, on Dec. 17,
prosecutors checked online prison records and found another, 29-
year-old man with the same name.
The differences between the two men were sweeping: Not only
were they eight years apart but they hailed from different towns.
The younger man was a Mara Salvatrucha gang member who had
been imprisoned for extortion in 2010 and was wanted in
connection with several slayings. He went by Jorge Chvez the
same name offered by the victim.
The older man was known as Jorge Martnez. He had no criminal
record.
Despite the disparities, prosecutors filed charges against 37-year-
old Jorge Martnez. Molina said the witness identified Martnez in a
photo lineup. However, the same witness later identified the other
man, Jorge Chvez, in another photo reel.
This was the start of the chain that ended in Martnezs death.
In early 2015, Wisper was accused of killing two young men in
San Pedro Masahuat. After a series of blunders, these charges,
too, would end up following the other Jorge Alberto Martnez
Chvez to the grave.
Until April 25, 2016, he had no idea about any of this.
Judges arent investigators
That day, a typical scorcher in San Salvador, capital police
stopped Martnez at the gas station where he worked dispatching
buses; they later said he had looked suspicious. They ran his
name through a database and couldnt believe their luck. They
thought they had stumbled upon Wisper, a gang leader and one
of the 100 most sought-after criminals in the country, and
promptly detained him.

Although Martnez was arrested on a single, erroneous warrant,

when Judge Daniel Ortiz in San Pedro Masahuat received news
that Wisper had been captured, he tacked on the double
murder. He didnt notice the discrepancies with the description of
that suspect.

We judges arent investigators, Ortiz said. He never saw

Martnez in person but sent him
to jail anyway. With heavy caseloads, judges often dont see
prisoners until they have spent weeks or months locked up in
Martnezs case, in a disease-ridden, gang-controlled police
holding cell in the nearby town of San Juan Talpa.

Martnez kept insisting he was innocent. He swore to his public

defender, Snchez, that he was not a gang member, stripping off
his shirt to show he had no tattoos. His job as a bus dispatcher
required him to travel through territory dominated by the 18th
Street gang, which would have been impossible if he were a Mara
Salvatrucha member.

Everything might have been settled by a police lineup, in which

the victim would have to identify Martnez as the man who tried
to kill him. That was postponed twice, first on May 16 because the
judge called in sick, and then on May 23 because the prosecutors
office forgot to arrange transportation for the victim.

And then time ran out. Martnez, who had spent a month in jail
without ever seeing a judge, died May 25 in a San Salvador
hospital.

On July 11, Judge Ortiz archived the attempted murder case,

citing a police report that Wisper had died.

Jorge Martnez Sr. holds a picture of his son. Nothing can bring
him back, he said. (Lissette Lemus /Courtesy of El Diario de Hoy)

Inmates literally rotting

When Martnez arrived in San Juan Talpa in late April, the holding
cells built for 20 people housed more than 110. The jail had
become a petri dish for outbreaks of scabies, pneumonia and
tuberculosis. In one instance, after 50 sick inmates were
quarantined with an unidentified virus, police scrubbed the cells
with bleach. Then the inmates were moved right back in.

In April, two prisoners died in the cell in the span of 48 hours. A

police officer told the daily newspaper La Prensa Grfica that
inmates attributed the deaths to ghosts. But the officer also said
prisoners shouted and threw each other against the walls.

Investigators from the national human rights office suspect the

men were beaten to death by their fellow prisoners. One was
covered in bruises; the other had deep scars on his wrists and
ankles. They were among at least 25 inmates who died in
Salvadoran police holding cells between January and June 2016.
Ninety-six more died in the same period in prisons, hospitals and
transport vehicles; nearly one-third were murdered, and the rest
died of illness or suicide.

According to the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, El

Salvadors prisons are the most jam-packed in the Western
Hemisphere except for Haitis. The populations began to swell in
the mid-2000s as a result of President Francisco Floress Strong
Hand policy, a series of tough-on-crime measures that included
increased police raids and longer sentences. Now a prison system
built for 10,000 inmates houses more than 37,000, not including
about 5,000 held in police jails.

The Strong Hand policy didnt consider what would happen

when all these people got locked up, said Rodil Hernndez, the
national prisons director. Gangs are using the prison system as a
rent-free corporate office, directing murders and extortion rings
with phones sneaked in by guards and visitors.

Last March, Hernndez declared a state of emergency in seven

prisons. Since then, thousands of prisoners have been barred
from visits with relatives, doctors and judges. Human rights
advocates have documented a spike in tuberculosis and other
contagious diseases. We found prisoners who were literally
rotting, said Gerardo Alegra of the human rights office,
describing oozing ulcers, infected gunshot wounds and limbs that
needed to be amputated.
Judicial processes have ground to a halt, and the total prison
population has increased 10 percent in the past six months,
sending the government scrambling to build new penitentiaries.
On Feb. 9, legislators extended the lockdown until 2018, crediting
it with a 20 percent drop in killings over the past year.

El Salvadors Supreme Court found in an investigation that

prisoners have as little as three square feet of space, lack
adequate food, water and medical care, and could spend months
or years locked up without trial.

Despite the diseases and the violence, Martnez seemed fine

when his father went to the jail on May 19. Family members
dropping off food can catch a glimpse of inmates through the iron
bars of the police station door.

Four days later, just hours after the canceled police lineup,
Martnez collapsed and was taken to a hospital. He died on May
25.

Meanwhile, deaths continue

The police report listed suspected tuberculosis as the cause of

death. The autopsy reported pneumonia, although it found that
Martnez had a burst liver. Autopsies in El Salvador are often
unreliable, according to international forensic experts; coroners
may perform half a dozen on a single shift.

Police at the San Juan Talpa holding cell suspect Martnez was
poisoned. Imprisoned gang members sometimes kill non-gang
cellmates as a way to ensure they dont tattle once they leave
jail.

The human rights office is investigating how Martnez died and

why he was arrested in the first place.
In an interview, Judge Ortiz said he realized only after Martnez
died that there were two men named Jorge Alberto Martnez
Chvez. They had almost the exact same characteristics, he
said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Jos Luis Manca claims officers
acted correctly in detaining Martnez, because there was a
warrant for his arrest. The address on the warrant, however,
belongs to the other man. Wisper is still at large.

Martnezs widow, Maritza Garca, struggles to support two sons

on the $15 to $25 a week she makes cleaning a school. Jorge
Martnez Sr. doesnt expect to learn the truth from the
investigation into his sons death.

A better use of time would be to investigate the cases of all the

innocent people imprisoned who are still alive, he said.

Last fall, three more prisoners died in the San Juan Talpa holding
cell.
Posted by Thavam