Senate leader Monreal, left, and the president are both opposed to bringing back the death penalty.
President López Obrador announced his opposition to a proposal to reinstate the death penalty at his morning press conference on Wednesday.
“I don’t believe in the death penalty and I also don’t think it’s an option, an alternative,” he told reporters.
His declaration came in response to a proposal on Tuesday by federal deputies from the Green Party and his own Morena party to put up for discussion the amendment of four articles of the constitution, as well as the country’s withdrawal from two international treaties by which is it bound not to reinstate the punishment.
They proposed the death penalty for those found guilty of femicide and homicide of people under 18 years of age, saying that the measure would be temporary “until Mexico returns to times of peace and tranquility.”
Green Party national director Carlos Puente and the party’s parliamentary leader in the Chamber of Deputies, Arturo Escobar, also suggested that the Supreme Court be the entity to decide on the matter.
Last week, National Action Party (PAN) Senator Víctor Fuentes Solís proposed a debate on the issue after the widely publicized femicides of Ingrid Escamilla and 7-year-old Fátima in Mexico City.
Morena party Senate leader Ricardo Monreal spoke against it, calling the death penalty a “barbarity.”
“We cannot, for the circumstances and crises which we’ve experienced in this country in recent years, establish this type of barbarous penalty,” he said.
The death penalty was abolished in Mexico in 1929 and the country signed the American Convention on Human Rights, also known as the “Pact of San José,” in 1969.
Article 4 of the treaty, which deals with the right to life, stipulates that “the death penalty shall not be reestablished in states that have abolished it.”
The president displays a graphic in the government's new phase of drug abuse campaign. Below the word 'danger' it says 'poison.'
President López Obrador announced the commencement of the second phase of his addiction prevention campaign after recognizing that the first phase was unsuccessful.
“We’re going to begin the second phase of the campaign to raise awareness of the harm that drugs cause,” he said at his morning press conference on Wednesday.
Recognizing that the government’s efforts have so far not had the desired effect, he said that the second phase will have a clearer message than the first.
“It didn’t have the effect we wanted. … What we want is to raise awareness, to announce what happens [with drugs], so we opted for this more direct campaign. We’re going to speak clearly,” he said.
Artists and filmmakers participated in the first phase by appearing in videos to persuade viewers to change their habits and avoid drug use.
The new campaign will include videos that warn of the physical and emotional consequences of consuming drugs.
López Obrador said the content will be produced by communications officials in the government rather than private sector enterprises because “they charge a lot; they are very creative but they are also very expensive.”
AMLO, as the president is commonly known, emphasized the importance of taking care of young people and asked the public not to discriminate against them in order to help ensure the success of the campaign.
“We’re helping the young people who were discriminated against, who people turned their backs on and just called ninis,” he said, referring to a name used to disparage out-of-work young people by saying they neither study nor work (ni estudia, ni trabaja).
“They coined that term and that was all they did for the young people. An attitude of disdain and marginalization. No longer,” he added.
“Young people have the possibility to work, they are being hired as apprentices, 900,000 youths are earning minimum wage while they’re being trained. They’re receiving their certificates, I’m signing them. Half of them are staying on to work for the same companies at which they were trained,” he said.
Stating that his administration’s goal is to help young people choose the right path, AMLO reiterated his commitment to strengthening moral, cultural and family values.
“We’re going to begin a direct campaign about what this underworld of painful sacrifices, this bitter reality, really entails,” he said.
“We’re dealing with the causes of insecurity, violence, corruption [and] preventing conspiracy between authorities and criminals, tending to the needs of the people.”
A memorial to the Mexican teen shot and killed by a US border patrol agent.
The federal government has expressed regret about a ruling by the United States Supreme Court that prevents the family of a teenage boy who was killed in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, in 2010 from suing the U.S. border patrol agent who shot him.
In a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), the government said that it was deeply concerned about the effects that the February 25 ruling will have on similar cases in which Mexicans died on their side of the border after being shot by border patrol agents from the U.S. side.
“With this precedent, such cases could now face limitations in demanding justice and compensation in courts of that country,” the SRE statement said.
Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca, 15, was shot in June 2010 by Jesús Mesa, a border patrol agent who was on duty in El Paso, Texas. Mesa was on a bicycle patrol when he was alerted to the presence of people smugglers, the BBC reported.
Hernández and a group of his friends were in the dried-up concrete bed of the Rio Grande at the time.
According to the youth’s family, Hernández and his friends were daring each other to run across the unmarked international border in the middle of the culvert built to contain the river, and touch a fence on the U.S. side.
Mesa detained one of the boys for illegally crossing the border but Hernández and another youth returned to the Mexican side and hid behind a pillar. The 15-year-old was shot twice as he peeked out from behind the pillar.
U.S. authorities ruled that the border agent had acted in self-defense even though they found no evidence that Hernández had thrown stones at him as he claimed.
Mexican authorities charged Mesa with murder but the United States refused to extradite him. Hernández’s parents subsequently attempted to sue the border agent in the United States for violating the U.S. Constitution by using excessive force.
Lower courts dismissed their claim before the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. The justices divided five to four along conservative-liberal lines to uphold the lower courts’ decision.
The conservative justices argued that “a cross-border shooting is by definition an international incident” and therefore should be solved diplomatically rather than legally. Allowing the boy’s parents to pursue compensation in the United States would have implications on foreign relations and national security, they said.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that Hernández’s parents couldn’t sue Mesa without congressional approval.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, one of the dissenting judges, said that the border agent’s “allegedly unwarranted deployment of deadly force occurred on United States soil” and that it did not make sense to dismiss the parents’ claim because the bullet ended up on the Mexican side of the border.
A lawyer for the family said that the ruling would “promote a Wild West attitude” on the U.S.-Mexico border.
“To be left with no remedy … given such a violent and unprovoked shooting, weakens the constitutional foundation of America’s house,” Robert Hilliard said.
In the SRE statement, the government said that it would continue to provide assistance to all Mexicans affected by cross-border incidents. It also noted that Mexico and the United States formed a border violence prevention group in 2014 that has met on six occasions and made progress on issues such as accountability and transparency.
I think I speak for many right now when I say, “What the hell, AMLO?”
I say this as a fan, and with not a little concern. I would have voted for him had I been a citizen myself, and though I’d have reservations today, I probably still would. But his response to the crisis of femicides has been so tone deaf that it has me wondering if he’s going senile. Where are his handlers?
You’d think by this point someone would have given him something to just read.
Especially unbecoming was the embarrassing sight of his wife initially supporting the women’s strike set to take place on March 9, and then, hours later, issuing a turnaround encouraging women not to strike.
Yikes.
We want the government to respond. But how can it do so? Do any of us really have a plan? With a justice system that is barely even symbolic, let alone effective, in this country, is it possible to fix a piece of it without fixing the whole of it? Believe me, I want all of it fixed. This particular issue of extreme gender violence just happens to be the one that horrifies me the most.
Recent news of child abuse (girls, of course) that horrifyingly falls into this category has me wondering how it is that history has such a sick way of repeating itself. This hatred is a sickness, but where does it come from? Is it psychological or sociological?
Back in the 1950s and 60s, when my mother was a child, she was physically and sexually abused until she finally managed to leave home at 18 and move to another city. Her abuse wasn’t a secret. She told everyone she could, trying to get help: teachers, other family members, people at church. While most people no doubt felt sorry for her, everyone opted to stay out of it, as it was a “private family issue.”
The memories of my mother’s stories came rolling back to me as I read about Kimberly, 8, who’d been killed by her father and stepmother just as her mother had finally been awarded custody. The mother only found out about her daughter’s death when she arrived to pick her up from court.
Neighbors said they were aware of the girl being beaten on a regular basis. Did anyone even try to help her? As long as there is so little faith in the justice system that regular citizens are afraid to speak out even when faced with the obvious abuse of a minor, we’re going to continue going down this awful path.
In the meantime, AMLO seems to be the modern equivalent of those who told my mother, “Look, that’s very sad, but it’s a personal family issue and we’ve got bigger fish to fry, OK? Come now, let the grownups work.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, as many times as necessary: femicides are not just “regular homicides” in which the victims just happen to be female. Femicides are crimes in which they are killed because they are women. Men are not killed for being men. That’s what makes them different.
Women aren’t being dramatic, and we’re not panicking over nothing. We’re not making this stuff up. We’re screaming and yelling, and the only thing that seems to get anyone’s attention is mass petty crime like spray painting some monuments or vandalizing a courthouse. Now that is something that gets some attention and condemnation!
I’ve seen the smirks. I’ve seen the contempt. I’ve seen the flashes of anger at being challenged. Hell, I read them in the comments section of my own articles every week (special shout-out to my haters who disparage my writing yet read every. single. one. of. my. columns.).
What will a strike do? I have no idea. Will it move anyone, or just make them hunker down further in their own views? Will it make the haters resent us and hold us in contempt even more?
Women have tried por las buenas. We’ve asked nicely. We’ve asked peacefully. We’ve participated in programs to help women even as their funding has been cut. It didn’t work. So fine. Por las malas.
You don’t like women marching and destroying things? Well we don’t like getting killed. Guess we’ll have to figure something out.
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
Some of the 13 Green Party deputies who support the death penalty for homicide and femicide.
Five lower-house lawmakers with the ruling Morena party and the entire contingent of 13 Green Party (PVEM) deputies presented on Tuesday a proposal to allow the death penalty in cases of femicide and aggravated homicide.
Under the proposal, which seeks to repeal the prohibition of capital punishment as outlined in Article 22 of the Mexican constitution, rapists who subsequently kill their victims, murderers of female minors and people found guilty of aggravated murder could be sentenced to death.
The Morena and PVEM deputies argued that even the threat of life imprisonment hasn’t been a sufficient deterrent to stop people from committing crimes of extreme cruelty, such as the murders this month of 25-year-old Ingrid Escamilla and 7-year-old Fátima Aldrighett.
The deputies said that the state has an obligation to punish the most heartless criminals with the severity that they deserve.
“We believe that the death penalty is a punishment that could help to reduce the … frequency of crimes such as those we have referred to,” the lawmakers said.
Their proposal does not seek to change any other parts of Article 22, which also prohibits physical punishments such as mutilation and torture.
Some lawmakers in the upper house of Congress also floated the idea of reconsidering the merits of the death penalty following the femicides of Escamilla and Fátima, whose deaths shocked Mexicans and led to the organization of a national women’s strike on March 9.
Senator Víctor Fuentes Solís of the National Action Party last week proposed holding a debate on whether men found guilty of the femicide of girls and women should face the death penalty. He said that experts from countries such as the United States and Japan, where capital punishment still exists, could be invited to participate in the debate.
However, the Morena party leader in the Senate, Ricardo Monreal, quickly poured cold water on the idea that the death penalty could be legalized in Mexico.
“Due to the circumstances and the crisis that the country has lived through in recent years, one cannot establish such barbaric penalties,” he said.
Even if there were sufficient support among lawmakers to legalize the death penalty, international law would stand in their way as Mexico is a signatory to the American Convention on Human Rights, which many Western Hemisphere countries signed in San José, Costa Rica, in 1969.
Article 4 of the convention – titled “Right to Life” – states that “the death penalty shall not be reestablished in states that have abolished it.”
However, that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from presenting proposals in recent years that sought to reintroduce capital punishment. Three such proposals were presented during the three-year term of Congress between 2006 and 2009 and another followed in the 2009-2012 period of the subsequent legislature. All were rejected.
In June 2018, the PVEM revived a proposal it first presented in 2009, its lawmakers advocating for the death penalty in cases of intentional homicide with aggravating circumstances such as rape, abduction and human trafficking. The same month, Nuevo León Deputy Jesús Gilberto Rodríguez Garza announced that he was presenting a proposal in favor of the death penalty for drug traffickers, murderers, kidnappers and rapists.
He also said that he favored chopping off the hands of thieves, as Nuevo León Governor Jaime “El Bronco” Rodríguez proposed while running for president in 2018.
Capital punishment dates back to pre-Hispanic times in the territory now known as Mexico but has been outlawed for almost a century. The Aztec, or Mexica, people, for example, imposed the death penalty via decapitation, stoning and hanging, among other methods.
A criminal code drawn up in independent Mexico in 1835 allowed convicted criminals to be killed with guns or clubs but the death penalty was abolished in 1869. However, it was reintroduced two years later before it was abolished again at the federal level in 1929.
The Defense Ministry awarded contracts to shell companies to build the now-abandoned Texcoco airport.
The Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) paid almost 2 billion pesos to 45 shell companies to which it awarded supply contracts related to construction work at the new Mexico City International Airport (NAIM), according to a report by the newspaper El Universal.
Last week the Federal Auditor’s Office revealed that it had detected irregularities in spending by the previous government on the canceled airport project in 2018. Now, El Universal has revealed irregularities in expenditure on the same project in the preceding three years.
As fencing and drainage work was being carried out in 2015, 2016, and 2017 at the airport site in Texcoco, México state, Sedena signed agreements with the Mexico City Airport Group – the state-owned firm that was responsible for the project – and the National Water Commission that allowed it to contract companies to complete work for which it had been given responsibility without having to open a public tendering process.
In order to complete the work it was assigned, Sedena needed to contract hundreds of private companies, El Universal reported.
Sedena awarded all of the contracts it issued either directly or after a private tender invitation to a select group of just three individuals or companies, arguing that a public tendering process would not allow it to obtain the materials or services it required quickly enough, and that in some cases, it would place national security at risk.
The direct contracting model Sedena followed at the NAIM is the same model the ministry used to contract companies for 851 public works projects during the governments of former presidents Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto, El Universal said. Other projects on which Sedena worked were also characterized by a lack of transparency and the use of shell companies, the newspaper reported.
The 45 airport contractors identified as shell companies by El Universal — following a review of 284 Sedena contracts obtained via transparency laws — received 1.78 billion pesos (US $93.7 million at today’s exchange rate) to supply goods and materials for construction work at the airport.
Sedena entered into a total of 117 contracts with the 45 shell companies. The supposed owners of 13 of them are prestanombres, or front men, El Universal said, explaining that they worked as security guards, builders, hairdressers and police or were supposedly beneficiaries of government welfare programs.
Efrén Sánchez Garibay, a low-ranking state police officer in Chiapas, is listed as a shareholder in one company that received about 1 million pesos for supposedly supplying concrete to Sedena, El Universal said. However, in a declaration of assets to the state Security Ministry, Sánchez said that he didn’t have interests in any companies and didn’t own any assets of significant value.
The names of three alleged owners of a construction company that entered into a contract with Sedena appear to have been taken from lists of people who signed up for agricultural subsidy schemes.
One of the alleged owners who spoke with El Universal on the condition of anonymity said that he was contacted by a “woman who worked on political campaigns” and that he subsequently signed documents and provided a copy of his electoral ID in order to sign up for a Ministry of Agriculture financial support program.
The new Santa Lucía airport, now under construction by the Defense Ministry.
“I signed several documents but I never heard anything more about the [financial] support,” the man said.
Eight companies that entered into agreements with Sedena are on a blacklist of the Federal Tax Administration because they provided false information, have tax debts or couldn’t be located at their listed addresses, El Universal said.
One of them – Soluciones Empresariales Santori – appears to have been established specifically to provide services to Sedena at the Texcoco airport, the report said, noting that it was founded in February 2016 and seven months later was awarded the first of five contracts worth a combined total of 45.2 million pesos.
Santori signed its final contract with Sedena in February 2017 and six months later the company was dissolved. El Universal noted that while construction work on the airport was being carried out, Santori provided electrical materials to Sedena even though it was supposedly a financial services company.
There are six other companies like Santori that provided construction materials to Sedena but were registered as firms with a completely different purpose.
Modesta Martínez, the alleged owner of one of the firms, sold approximately 1.3 million pesos of wood to Sedena but when El Universal visited the company’s listed address in Puebla it found a juice stand. The female operator of the stand said that she didn’t know Modesta Martínez and that she has already provided information to the Treasury.
“This is my business and I don’t know anything. I just rent [the stand] and there’s no wood. I don’t know what you’re coming to look for, [people] already came to look for that person four times,” she said.
Many of the other companies that signed airport contracts had no prior experience in supplying construction materials and some of them were not registered with the Economy Ministry, El Universal said. The newspaper also found that many of the companies that were awarded contracts by Sedena had the same supposed shareholders, administrators and lawyers and were established on the same date at the same address and have the same telephone number.
Fernando Nieto Morales, a public administration professor and researcher at the Colegio de México who has a particular interest in public policy implementation and government corruption, told El Universal that Sedena has become a key player in priority infrastructure projects but explained that it is not a ministry that is known for being transparent about its activities.
“Sedena has increased responsibilities and we should take the time to hold them to account. The problem is that it’s not accustomed to transparency,” he said.
Nieto added that it would be preferable for the government to put other government departments that are accustomed to being transparent in charge of most public works projects and only give responsibility to Sedena for projects in which national security is at stake.
“This is a paradox because a lot of people in this country trust the army a lot because they believe that there is a chain of command, that orders are carried out and that this allows [their] actions to be more effective,” he said.
President López Obrador long argued that the new Mexico City International Airport was corrupt, using the claim as one of the main reasons to justify his decision to hold a public consultation on the project. After seven in 10 participants indicated that they favored converting the Santa Lucía Air Force Base into a commercial airport rather than completing the NAIM, López Obrador canceled Peña Nieto’s signature infrastructure project.
Construction of the Santa Lucía airport, located approximately 50 kilometers north of Mexico City in México state, began last October after the government was successful in overturning a series of court orders that held up the project for months.
A performance of the opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell is among the events scheduled.
Mexico City’s historic center becomes the stage for theater, opera, electronic music, dance, gastronomy and more at the 36th edition of the Festival Centro Histórico, to be held March 19 to April 5.
Shows and other events are spread out over 20 emblematic sites in this centuries-old community, such as the Palace of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Esperanza Iris Theater, the Justo Sierra Historic Synagogue and the San Ildefonso College. In addition, free events will be held in public parks and plazas.
This year’s event will honor both the 250th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven and the 350th of Italian Baroque composer Antonio Caldara.
Another musical highlight is the Kuba Wiecek Jazz Trio, headed by saxophonist and composer Wiecek, one of Poland’s best-known young musicians. It’s on March 20 at the Claustro de Sor Juana University.
The most important theatrical event will be a performance of the opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell. With costumes and choreography inspired by the surrealist work of artists Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington, it’s at the Esperanza Iris Theater on March 27 and 28.
The Mexico City orchestra Antiqva Metropoli will perform at the annual festival.
For children, Haryk, about a dog who does not like to bathe, will be staged by the Ostrava Marionette Theater from the Czech Republic on March 29 at the Centro Cultural España en México.
The Festival del Centro Histórico was founded in 1985, the same year as an earthquake that devastated this part of the city, leaving it blighted for many years. It has been held annually ever since, bringing national and international artists from various performing arts. Past festivals have hosted such artists of renown as Café Tacuba, Manu Chao, Wynton Marsalis, Diego el Cigala, Goran Bregovic, Lila Downs, Yann Tiersen and Gabriel García Márquez.
Festival director Pablo Maya says that “the mission of the festival remains active.” Not only do the historic sites of the city center still need promotion (with many still in disrepair), he adds that “the performing arts have evolved, and the festival along with them.” In particular, the organization looks for acts that have not yet performed in Mexico.
The festival is sponsored by the non-profit Festival del Centro Histórico, A.C., in collaboration with the federal Culture Ministry and the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature, the Culture Ministry of Mexico City and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Co-sponsors include the Polish government, the Czech Ministry of Culture, the Spanish Cultural Center in Mexico, the Goethe-Institut and the Italian Institute of Culture. Domestic sponsors include the states of Yucatán, Jalisco and Coahuila, along with Citibanamex.
The festival has become highly anticipated and events sell out fast. Tickets are available at the festival’s main office at the Hilton Reforma in Mexico City and through Ticketmaster as well as individual venues.
Mexico News Daily
CORRECTION: The number of venues for the festival is 20 and not 36 as indicated in the earlier version of this story.
Four artists are collaborating with the government of Juchitán, Oaxaca, to paint 100 murals as part of efforts to beautify the earthquake-ravaged municipality.
Houses fell like dominoes in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec municipality when an 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Chiapas just before midnight on September 7, 2017. Not only were many homes and other buildings destroyed but also most of the murals painted by two artists’ collectives in the preceding years.
In that context, the government led by Morena party Mayor Emilio Montero Pérez launched a project called “100 murals for Juchitán” that is aiming to have all the artworks completed by the end of its three-year term in 2022.
Jesús Vicente Lagunas, one of the four muralists hired by the local council, told the newspaper El Universal that 45 murals have already been painted, explaining that they feature “characters and trades of the city – men making huaraches [traditional sandals], women embroiderers and cooks … children playing marbles and flying kites.”
Municipal urban art director Jesús Vicente Lagunas said that the aim of painting the murals is to beautify Juchitán and remind residents of the people “who give and have given their best for society.”
Francisco Toledo, the Juchitán-born artist who died last year, is featured on one of the new murals.
The four artists working on the government initiative have already painted murals featuring icons of Juchitán, such as iguanas and embroidery, at the recently rebuilt 5 de Septiembre Market, he said.
While the “100 murals for Juchitán” project is adding much-needed color to the streets destroyed by the 2017 earthquake, not all residents are happy about it.
Some local artists, such as muralist David Orozco, say that they were not invited to participate in the project.
“They’ve hired people without a background in muralism. I have more than 20 years [experience] and I feel excluded. I believe that [a project with] public resources should include everyone,” he told El Universal.
In contrast, a 53-year-old food vendor who features in one of the murals couldn’t be happier.
“Of course I’m happy. My children are happy and my neighbors were surprised when the young men finished painting me,” Guadalupe Vásquez Felipe said.
Beatles drummer Ringo Starr will perform in Mexico City later this year.
Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band will perform at the National Auditorium in Mexico City on October 20.
Promoter Ocesa Total announced on Monday that the Beatles’ drummer will return to Mexico to present his new studio album What’s My Name, which was released in October 2019.
Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, Men at Work frontman Colin Hay, Santana singer Gregg Rolie, saxophonist Warren Ham, drummer Gregg Bissonette and guitarist Hamish Stuart will accompany Starr on stage.
Pre-sale tickets will be on offer March 2 and 3 while remaining seats will be available from March 4. Prices range from 480 pesos to 3,580 pesos (US $25-$187).
The concert will be Starr’s first in Mexico since 2015 when he performed the Beatles’ classics “Yellow Submarine” and “With a Little Help from My Friends” as well as his solo hit “It Don’t Come Easy” at the National Auditorium, located on Reforma Avenue next to Chapultepec Park.
Since the breakup of the Beatles, the Liverpool native has released 20 solo studio albums as well as several live recordings with the All-Starr Band. During his long musical career, the 79-year-old also collaborated with musical legends such as B.B. King, Keith Moon, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty.
But Ringo Starr will forever be best known for playing in the Beatles alongside John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney, who last played in Mexico in 2017.
The couple sought in the death of a child in Quintana Roo.
A child in Quintana Roo died last week from injuries sustained from the ingestion of hydrochloric acid just a day before her mother won back custody of her.
Kimberly Berenice Chi Bautista, 8, died on Tuesday, February 18 from septic shock and acid burns on her esophagus.
Authorities in Cancún are looking for the girl’s father, identified as José Chi, and stepmother, whose identity has not been released. The latter is believed to have forced Kimberly to drink the poisonous substance. Both are considered fugitives.
The girl’s mother, Rocío del Carmen Bautista Maldonado, says that Chi abandoned her and Kimberly to go live with another woman. He later filed for custody, and Bautista lost guardianship of her daughter in June of last year.
She had been petitioning the courts to win back custody since then, and was finally awarded it the day after her daughter was pronounced dead. She was made aware of the girl’s death when she went to pick her up from state authorities.
Bautista accused the girl’s father of being responsible for her death. Kimberly’s body showed several signs of physical abuse, and neighbors had told Bautista that they were aware of the girl being beaten continually.
She also claimed that her complaints against Chi had not been processed earlier due to corruption and nepotism in his favor within the state Attorney General’s Office.
