Mexican Judge Found Video Evidence Compelling in Case of Detained US Mom Rafael Romo - CNN
go to original June 4, 2013

In the end, it was security camera video that made the difference.

Yanira Maldonado, an Arizona mother of three children and four stepchildren who spent nine days detained in Mexico under suspicion of smuggling marijuana, was released from a Nogales, Mexico, prison Friday, mainly because of that video.

The judge's ruling, obtained exclusively by CNN, shows the surveillance video from a bus terminal and the testimony of three witnesses, were more than sufficient to convince Maria del Carmen Salcedo Garcia, a Mexican federal judge in the border city of Nogales, Mexico; to give Maldonado her freedom back.

The prosecution's case, the 29-page document shows, was merely circumstantial. In other words, Maldonado was arrested simply because one of two packages of marijuana discovered on the bus was found under her seat.

In the ruling, Salcedo Garcia calls the prosecution's case "not apt or sufficient to corroborate that Yanira Maldonado ... is the person who transported the narcotics."

Read the rest at CNN

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