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El Salvador Judicial Reform
With the enactment of enabling legislation by the Legislative
Assembly in the summer of 1985, the Salvadoran government
initiated a judicial reform effort in collaboration with AID,
which provided US$9.2 million in assistance. The program called
for institutionalizing due process and the rule of law, including
the speedy and fair trial of persons accused of crimes. Another
important objective was to bring to justice the perpetrators of
particularly notorious crimes, such as political assassinations.
The Salvadoran government's reform effort included
establishing a study commission that drafted changes in the
military justice and penal codes and proposed steps to reduce the
prison population, create a judicial career system, and implement
merit selection of judges. Progress in reforming the judicial
institution continued to be slow, however, and encountered many
problems in 1988. Under the judicial administration and training
portion of the program, the government established four new
courts in order to reduce case backlogs, completed a management
assessment of the judiciary, inaugurated three new law libraries,
and trained judicial personnel both locally and abroad. The
government also drafted legislation aimed at improving the
administrative efficiency of the judiciary.
According to the Department of State, the judicial reform
program comprised a legal revisory commission, a judicial
protection unit, a commission for investigations, and a judicial
training program. The first component was created by decree in
June 1985 and called the Revisory Commission for Salvadoran
Legislation. It consisted of ten presidential appointees
representing three ministries, the Supreme Court, law faculties,
and attorney associations. Its purpose was to coordinate the
overall judicial reform effort, to study the Salvadoran judicial
system, and to develop the resulting draft legislation for the
Legislative Assembly. The commission focused its efforts
initially on revising procedures and laws to improve such facets
of the existing criminal law system as rules of evidence and
procedures, the jury system, and legal defense and detention. The
commission also planned to explore the possibility of a new
Decree 50-style code to prosecute crimes against the government.
In addition, it envisioned longer term and costlier reforms such
as merit selection of judges and judicial career service.
The second component, the Judical Protection Unit (Unidad de
Proteccion Judicial--UPJ), was initiated in 1984 (formally
created by decree in September 1985) to provide security for
judges, jurors, prosecutors, and witnesses in politically
controversial criminal cases. In the UPJ's first assignments, a
group of sixty prison guards who had received training in the
United States provided security for participants in the
churchwomen's murders trial in the summer of 1984 and the
Sheraton case trial in February 1986. The initial concept of the
unit was found unworkable, however, owing to the high costs of
maintaining a sufficiently large and well-trained force. In early
1988, the government was considering a new proposal to establish
the unit as a professional risk-assessment team that would plan
and organize protection in appropriate cases; protective
personnel would then be drawn from law enforcement units or
private contractors.
The third component, the Investigations Commission (Comision
para Investigaciones--CI), was created by decree in July 1985 to
develop criminal investigation capabilities, supported by
forensic laboratories. The members of this civilian-controlled
agency were appointed by the president. Chaired by the minister
of justice, it included the vice minister of interior and a
representative of the president. Reporting to the commission was
an executive-branch office responsible for managing the twentyseven -member Special Investigative Unit, the eight-member
Forensic Unit, and a legal and administrative support unit. The
SIU was formed in 1985 to investigate politically important
crimes and consisted of Salvadoran soldiers or officials trained
by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Required by law to be drawn from the security forces, SIU members
remained salaried employees of those forces. The Forensic Unit
was inaugurated in mid-1987 and by early 1988 was approaching
full operational capacity. The SIU and the Forensic Unit, which
were almost fully equipped and trained, had made valuable
contributions to the investigations of several key cases,
including the Romero assassination. The investigative and
forensic expertise of the two units was unprecedented in El
Salvador and represented a significant step in the
professionalization of the country's criminal justice system.
The fourth component, the Judicial Training Program, was
designed to improve the court system's administrative management,
human resources, and physical facilities. Under this project, the
government established two new courts to deal with a serious
backlog of cases, assessed court equipment needs, set up a new
administrative unit for the court system to release judges from
administrative tasks, and provided short-term training for judges
and justices of the peace.
Data as of November 1988
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