Mexico's 'narco-lawyers' risk everything

One 'Bulletproof Lawyer' survived four assassination attempts before being gunned down. Such unsolved killings highlight the violence within a judicial system manipulated by powerful drug cartels.

By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson
LA Times
October 12, 2009

Reporting from Culiacan, Mexico, and Monterrey, Mexico -- Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, once hailed here as "the Bulletproof Lawyer," could outrun the bullets no longer.

Villanueva, one of Mexico's most controversial attorneys, was shopping in Monterrey in August when hooded gunmen with automatic weapons tracked her down amid stalls of handbags, perfume and videos, then pumped more than a dozen shots into her body.

The killers delivered a final shot to the head before fleeing the covered market, busy with shoppers at midday on a Sunday.

Villanueva, 56, a single mother known for her combative courtroom manner and for having survived four attacks, was probably the best known among the ranks of Mexican lawyers who practice a particularly dicey specialty: defending accused drug lords.

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