Facing justice is “the worst thing that can happen to a person,” defendant tells court

After more than four years facing prosecution, Juan Asael Martínez told judges that the legal process had become the defining burden of his adult life.

Martínez, one of 15 defendants in the alleged corruption case led by former Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez, asked the Second Collegiate Court of the National District to declare the criminal action against him extinguished. He said the proceedings had lasted four years and five months and had brought severe personal and financial restrictions.

“After death and a terminal illness, the ordeal of a legal proceeding is the worst thing that can happen to a person,” Martínez told judges Claribel Nivar Arias, Clara Castillo and Yissell Soto. He said he wanted to return to ordinary life, build a business, marry and start a family without the case hanging over him.

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After death and a terminal illness, the ordeal of a legal proceeding is the worst thing that can happen to a person.

Martínez said he was not yet 30 when the case began. Since then, he said, he has been unable to make a transfer or deposit at Banco de Reservas and cannot renew the license plate of a vehicle subject to an objection by prosecutors. “I want to rebuild my life,” he told the court.

His lawyers, Nassef Perdomo Cordero and Francisco Álvarez Martínez, argued that the case “shows no sign of ending.” Martínez and the other defendants have asked the court to dismiss the accusation, saying the file has exceeded the four-year limit established by the Code of Criminal Procedure. The court rejected a similar request from Rodríguez the previous week.

Martínez also recalled accepting a possible agreement with prosecutors even though he maintained that he had nothing to do with the alleged offenses. The arrangement collapsed after he accused the Public Prosecutor’s Office in court of pressuring him to negotiate. The case also includes his brother, César Nicolás Rizik Pimentel. The defendants are accused of defrauding the state of more than 6 billion pesos.

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I want to rebuild my life. I want to return to the normal things a person my age does. I want to make plans, build, start a business without this shadow over me. I want to be able to marry and start a family.