Foreign Law: Until Proven Innocent

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FOREIGN LAW

Ever since he drove across the border into Mexico, Dykes Simmons, 38, has had good reason to reflect upon the problems of American suspects abroad. For seven years, while he has sweated out a death sentence in his sun-baked prison cell in Monterrey, the Fort Worth crane operator, now a convicted murderer, has pondered the harsh fact that whatever Mexican law says, an American defendant may well have to prove his innocence in the face of assumed guilt. In a U.S. court, a prosecutor would have had to prove Simmons' guilt beyond a reasonable doubt—a difficult, if not impossible, task.

Illegal Line-Up. Dykes Simmons is the first American ever to be sentenced to death by a Mexican court. The crime for which he was condemned to face a firing squad occurred on the night of Oct. 12, 1959, after Simmons entered Mexico from Laredo, Texas, about 45 minutes behind a Monterrey dentist named Raúl Pérez Villagómez. Roughly 43 miles south of Laredo, the dentist's car broke down. Leaving his younger brother and two sisters behind, Villagómez went for help. When he got back to his car, his brother and one sister were dead, riddled with .22-cal. bullets. Hilda Villagómez, 18, had been shot seven times, and was barely alive.

At the hospital, where she survived for 17 days, Hilda described the gunman as a tall, blond, 200-lb. American who had stopped in his southbound car, tried vainly to start the Villagómez car, and started shooting when the youngsters giggled at his failure. He wore a white shirt and dark trousers, she said, had two gold teeth, and drove a blue 1958 Chevrolet with Texas plates. Mexican police immediately began a massive man hunt for all Americans who had crossed the border at Laredo on Oct. 12. In a dusty village 130 miles northwest of the murder scene, they picked up Simmons—and immediately freed him as the wrong man.

Sightseeing Mistake. Not only was he 3 in. shorter and more than 35 lbs. lighter than the fugitive Hilda had described, but he had dark hair (now grey) and no gold teeth; he wore different clothes and drove a two-toned 1954 Oldsmobile. Told that it was all a mistake, Simmons spent the next day sightseeing and swimming only 50 miles from the border. He might better have headed for home. While he relaxed, the police learned that he had been convicted of burglary and auto theft in the U.S. Besides, he was technically a fugitive from a Texas mental hospital, and he had signed his tourist's card with his brother's name (because the car was registered in that name). Most important, Mexico was crying for an arrest.

Picked up once more, Simmons was threatened with a cocked gun in a vain effort to make him confess, then hauled to Hilda's hospital room, where the dying girl had already identified the killer as everyone from her own doctor to one of the FBI's ten top fugitives. In such cases, the penal code of the State of Nuevo León specifies that the suspect be placed in a line-up with similar persons in similar dress. Simmons was ordered to wear a white shirt and dark trousers and brought into the room with white-coated doctors. Hilda by then could hardly speak; a bullet had destroyed her tongue and upper teeth. The prosecutor leaned close and only he heard her alleged words: "Yes, it is he. May God forgive me if I am wrong."