Trial Annulment in Guatemala Rejected by Judge
Source: NY Times
The judge presiding over the genocide trial of Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, a former Guatemalan dictator, refused Friday to follow another judge’s ruling that would have forced prosecutors to retry the whole case.
“No public official, either civil or military, is obligated to follow manifestly illegal orders because that would imply committing a crime,” said Judge Yasmín Barrios, speaking before a courtroom in Guatemala City that was filled with foreign diplomats, human rights monitors and survivors of past massacres.
The judge who ruled Thursday to annul the proceedings, Carol Patricia Flores, “has exceeded her functions,” said Judge Barrios, who suspended further testimony to await a ruling she had requested from the Constitutional Court, Guatemala’s highest, on the legality of the annulment. Guatemala’s attorney general, Claudia Paz y Paz, as well as lawyers for victims’ groups, have also appealed to the court.
The legal confusion surrounding a trial that is a test case for Guatemala’s judicial system cast into relief the polarized emotions that have been raised by a month of testimony about the bloodiest chapter in the country’s long-running civil war. As Judge Barrios finished speaking, the courtroom erupted into cheers and chants of “justice.” The day before, it was the supporters of General Ríos Montt, 86, and his co-defendant and former intelligence chief, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, who were jubilant when the annulment effectively turned the clock back on all proceedings in the case to November 2011. One supporter whispered loudly “divine justice.”
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/world/americas/judge-rejects-annulment-of-ex-dictators-guatemala-trial.html
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Justice has been a long time coming in Central America.
Now if we could just figure out how to do it up here. 
