Mongolian attorneys and judges in McLennan County learning about U.S Judicial System

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - McLennan County judges are hosting attorneys and judges from Mongolia so they can learn about our judicial system.

This partnership between McLennan County and Mongolia started over 30 years ago through the Spurlock Judicial Fund, a nonprofit that is helping Mongolians reform their system after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

After the collapse, the Mongolian Supreme Court Justices went looking for partners that wanted to help them transition from a communist one-party system to a democratic multi-party system.

Presiding over the program, Judge Matthew Wright says they have come to see how our system is different than theirs.

“In their system all the investigation is only done by the prosecution, the defense has no ability to call expert witnesses, has no ability to call other witnesses, can’t conduct their own investigations. So, they are learning about how the state and the defense both have the ability to do investigations, call experts test, the scientific stuff and then allow the jury to make the decision about what is the truth,” Judge Wright explained.

They estimate over the 30 years in operation, anywhere from 700 to 800 lawyers and attorneys have been trained.

Once a year in the fall, Mongolian Attorneys and Judges come to Texas to learn about how prosecution and defense use different resources in court, all while asking questions about our legal system.

Former Judge for the Supreme Court of Mongolia, Ganzorig Gombosuren, says the information their team learns here will be spread to all other parts of their justice system in Mongolia.

“We need to train lawyers to uphold these principles and core issues in Mongolia, and that’s why we are trying to learn and that’s where we educate our judges and lawyers so that they can apply all this properly,” Gombosuren said.

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