July 15, 1997
Case: Benjamín Flores
Founder, editor and owner of the newspaper La Prensa, San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora.
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He was walking to the paper when a man who got out of a moving pickup truck fired at him, then went back to the truck to get a pistol to finish him off with three more shots to the head. He then fled with three other individuals.
2001:
On May 2, 2001 Jorge Pacheco Reyes and Miguel Vidal Zamora Lara were sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Sentences reversed and acquittals: (+)
Jorge Pacheco Reyes and Miguel Vidal Zamora
Released / Sentence commuted: (+)
Jailed awaiting trial: (+)
Luis Enrique Rincón Muro was accused and arrested at the perpetrator. He was freed on July 16, 2004 because of contradictions in the evidence against him (reasonable doubt). He remained in prison for some seven years.
Miguel Vidal Zamora Lara was held in custody as the alleged perpetrator. He was released in 1998 and exonerated of the charges of complicity in the murder.
Gabriel González Gutiérrez, the alleged mastermind, was extradited in April 2006 from the United States, where he was serving sentence for drug trafficking. He was jailed in accused of murdering the journalist. By July 2007 he had not yet been tried.
Suspects not charged: (+)
The murder charge against Jaime González Gutiérrez, the alleged mastermind, was dropped in January 1998 lack of evidence.
Warrants were issued for the arrest of José Francisco Benavides Avila, Arsenio Pérez Losada and Carlos Pacheco García, alleged to have taken part in the ambush of the journalist. By July 2007 they had not been arrested.
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