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New Penal Bench magistrate advocated marriage proposal as a rape defense, legalized domestic violence and longer prison terms for true but unflattering news reports

Torrijos names Mejía, Ortega to high court
by Eric Jackson

President Martín Torrijos has appointed attorneys Jerónimo Mejía and Oydén Ortega to fill positions on the Supreme Court's penal and civil benches respectively. Both men are high-profile PRD members and generally regarded as highly competent lawyers.

Mejía comes to the high court with relatively little experience in public service but a long career as a criminal defense lawyer. His most noteworthy public post was his membership on a presidential commission that drafted a new Penal Code that President Torrijos forwarded to the National Assembly and which, after many protests and some amendments, was passed in amended form. The recommendations that Mejía and his fellow commissioners made included the legalization of the first offense of domestic violence by requiring a "pattern of conduct" to prove the crime; the proposal of marriage as a defense to a statutory rape charge; and an increase in the penalties for the twin crimes of calumnia e injuria --- criminal defamation --- that left the truth as no defense to the crime of injuia (injury to a prominent person's reputation).

As a lawyer Mejía has made use of the calumnia e injuria statutes, and is presently prosecuting a case against anti-corruption activist Enrique Montenegro. In objections filed with the presidential commission that reviewed applicants for spots on the Supreme Court, Montenegro said that Mejía should be investigated for allegedly improper ties to pushbuttons and to a role in alleged land transactions that were most curiously conducted among parties who were dead at the time. In answers to the review commission's questions Mejía did not get into the specifics of those complaints but dismissed them as coming from Montenegro. Despite his advocacy of more severe criminal defamation laws, he also after a PRD-led shareholder faction took control of that daily represented La Prensa and some of its journalists who were charged with calumnia e injuria.

Mejía's other clients include Seguro Social director René Luciani in the poisoned cough syrup scandal, former Banco Continental floor manager Miguel Sierra (allegedly a key player in a massive drug money laundering scheme said to be headed by one José Nelson Urrego, a Colombian citizen), alleged Ecuadoran bank embezzler Nicolás Landes and the Paitilla Medical Center in criminal malpractice cases.

Oydén Ortega arose to prominence in various civilian governmental posts during the 21-year military dictatorship. He was one of the key negotiators for the Panamanian side in the talks that led to the 1977 Panama Canal Treaties. Later he served under General Torrijos as Minister of Labor, and then under General Noriega as Foreign Minister.

In the latter post he played a role in the Contadora Process that, after his time as foreign minister, resulted in agreements that ended Central America's civil wars and created a Central American Parliament to gives the region's ex-presidents a window of immunity from investigation or prosecution for the crimes that they may have committed while in office as their countries' chief executives.

Elected to the legislature for the 1994-1999 term, Ortega served as the president of the body's Foreign Affairs Committee. When the Pérez Balladares administration negotiated a deal with the Clinton administration to prolong the presence of US military bases in Panama via a "Multinational Anti-Drug Center," Ortega was one of the key legislators who informed Pérez Balladares that the proposal was unacceptable to the assembly.

Since leaving the legislature Ortega has taught law and served as the dean of the law faculty at the Universidad del Istmo. He's also a prominent player in a movement to drop Panama's diplomatic relations with Taiwan and establish formal ties with the People's Republic of China.

The National Assembly's Credentials Committee approved the president's nominees within a few minutes after having received them, without any pretense of holding a hearing about their holding them. The nominations were then approved the next day on a voice vote, with only Cambio Democratico deputy Dalia Bernal voting against. The voice vote procedure avoided a record of votes cast and will thus allow incumbent opposition deputies to deny that they voted for Mejía or Ortega when seeking another term in 2009

Speaking for the Mireyista faction of the legislature, which has a vested interest in a legal system that condones open corruption, Panameñista deputy Pacífico Escalona called the appointments "positive" in El Panama America. But a colleague and fellow member of the Panameñista Party, Luis Carlos Cleghorn, panned the choices as unduly partisan in the same daily.

Also appointed were Luis Mario Mandeville as Mejía's suplente (alternate) and Gisela Del Carmen Agurto as Ortega's.

After a year's vacancy Torrijos also appointed Nelly Emperatriz Cedeño as the suplente for magistrate Víctor Benavides of the court's Administrative Bench. A year ago the president had appointed Janina Small to that post, even though she had previously told the administration that she wasn't applying for the job because she didn't meet the legal minimum requirements to hold it. Small never accepted the appointment and Torrijos took a year to find another nominee.