Court Rejects Mario Villanueva’s Bid to Reduce Prison Sentence

A federal court has rejected the request made by former Quintana Roo governor Mario Villanueva to reduce his sentence, meaning he will have to serve the more than 13 years remaining of his prison term. Additionally, he faces the risk of being returned to a federal prison to complete his sentence.

The defense of the former governor filed a request for his 37-year and 3-month prison sentence to be reduced. However, the Sixth District Court Specialized in Sentence Execution, located in Mexico City, ruled that this request would not be accepted.

In this regard, Villanueva reportedly requested an injunction against this denial, but it was also not accepted, as he was asked to rectify requirements that were not covered in his petition for it to be admitted.

Therefore, the former governor must continue serving his sentence, approximately 20 years of which have already passed since it began. He still has more than one-third of the sentence left to serve, and there is no certainty about where he will complete it.

On the other hand, he also has an injunction regarding the possibility of serving his sentence under house arrest due to medical issues. However, authorities have attempted to reverse this measure so that he returns as an inmate to a federal prison, but for now his injunction remains in effect.

Nevertheless, the possibility has not been ruled out that Villanueva could re-enter a prison in the Mexican Republic when his injunction’s validity ends. Meanwhile, he remains at his residence since the confinement period due to COVID-19, although the legal outlook for the former governor does not appear particularly favorable for him.

It should be noted that during the term of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, he requested amnesty, but no court has wanted to approve the petition, so it has been rejected on multiple occasions, despite appeals and even attempts at intervention by the former federal leader.