Murder Charge Against Woman Dropped

Prosecutors have dropped a murder charge against a woman who says she shot and killed a man because he was trying to rape her - a case closely watched by women’s rights groups around the world.

“This is a great achievement,” one of Claudia Rodriguez’s attorneys, Ana Laura Magaloni, said Saturday.

Prosecutor Victor Hugo Blancas dropped the charge in papers filed Friday during final arguments in the case. He did not comment on his decision. The state still claims that Rodriguez used excessive force in her defense, a crime that carries a sentence of from three days to seven years in prison. Judge Carlos Cruz Preciado is to rule within two weeks.

Women’s groups in and out of Mexico have rallied around the working-class mother of five, claiming that her case demonstrates a double standard in Mexico.

Defense attorney Roberto Martinez contended that Rodriguez, 30, had no choice but to shoot Juan Miguel Cabrera, 27, when he followed her and a woman friend from a bar where the three had spent the night dancing and drinking.

The women said Cabrera suggested they go to a hotel, made lewd suggestions - then started ripping at Rodriguez’s clothes.

She shot him once with a .22-caliber pistol.

Rodriguez has testified she resisted Cabrera’s advances and tried to warn him away with the gun she had carried since an earlier assault, but he attacked her, telling her something like, “No woman has ever gotten away from me.”