Rébsamen School Collapse Families File Amparo Seeking Intentional Homicide Ruling
Families of three victims of the 2017 Rébsamen school collapse want the engineer's sentence changed to intentional homicide. What the appeal asks and why.
Relatives of three people who died when the Colegio Enrique Rébsamen collapsed in the Sept. 19, 2017, earthquake have filed an amparo, a federal constitutional challenge, against the sentence given to the school’s co-responsible official for structural safety, identified in court records as Francisco Arturo “N.”
The families want federal judges to find that he committed intentional homicide (homicidio doloso) instead of negligent homicide (homicidio culposo), the charge he was convicted on. Their lawyer says the change would mean several more years in prison, El Universal reported.
What the families are asking the federal courts
Noé Franco Pacheco, who represents the families, told El Universal that the evidence in the case, read as a whole, shows intentional conduct by the defendant. The families disagree with how the trial court classified his actions, he said.
An amparo in Mexico lets a person ask the federal judiciary to review whether a decision by another authority, including a lower court, violated their rights. In this case, the families are asking the Federal Judicial Branch to examine the first-instance ruling and reclassify the crime.
Franco Pacheco said that if federal judges accept the argument and grant the amparo as requested, any new decision would have to recognize intent, and the penalties would have to change to match. He described the difference as having “concrete consequences” for the punishment.
The sentence under challenge
The ruling the families are contesting was handed down on Sept. 19, 2024, exactly seven years after the earthquake. It came from a panel trial court attached to Judicial Management Unit Seven, which sits at the Reclusorio Sur prison complex in southern Mexico City.
The length of the sentence and the defendant’s response to the amparo were not disclosed in the report.
Negligent versus intentional homicide
Mexican criminal law treats a death caused by carelessness differently from one caused with intent. A culposo conviction means the court found the person failed to take due care, while a doloso finding means the court concluded the person knew or accepted the harm their conduct could cause. The second carries far heavier prison terms.
For the families, the label matters because it decides how long the person responsible for the school’s structural safety stays behind bars. Their lawyer argues the trial court looked at pieces of evidence separately when it should have weighed them together.
Why it matters for Mexico City
The Rébsamen collapse in the Tlalpan area became one of the defining tragedies of the 2017 quake, and it raised hard questions about how buildings in the capital were approved and inspected. The officials who sign off on structural safety, known as corresponsables, are part of the city’s system for checking that construction meets building rules.
How the courts treat the responsibility of these officials is watched closely by residents who live and send children to school in buildings across the city, many of which went through the same approval process. A ruling that recognizes intent would set a tougher standard for people in that role than a finding of negligence.
What happens next
The amparo now goes to the federal judiciary, which will decide whether to grant it. No date for a decision has been announced.
Source: El Universal
