A local mob mistook the three for thieves who had held up a beer truck earlier in the day, doused them with gasoline, and burned them to death. The lynchings are symptomatic of a dysfunctional judicial system of corrupt judges, frightened prosecutors, and backlogged dockets. Almost three-quarters of the prisoners crowded into Guatemala's jails have yet to be tried for a crime. With few exceptions, powerful people who commit crimes including military officials responsible for massacres are never prosecuted. Any problem can be resolved with money.
Delinquents go free if they pay enough.
All this has contributed to popular frustration with the justice system, which is the Achilles' heel of democracy in Guatemala. They're an alternative justice system, and they work in that they make criminals afraid. In many of the lynchings, according to the UN report, former local military officials have been identified as instigators. Although the peace accords clearly limited the army's postwar role to defending the country's borders, the rise in crime provided a convenient excuse to keep troops on city streets and in the highland villages. The peace accords abolished several security forces that had been singled out for rights violations.