Mexican prosecutors have dropped a murder case against a 23-year-old woman who was charged after killing the man who raped her.

Roxana Ruiz was jailed after choking Sinai Cruz to death with a shirt her shirt at her home in May 2021.
Cruz beat and raped Ruiz after offering to walk her home from a bar in the city of Nezahualcóyotl, State of Mexico.

The case sparked national outcry after Ruiz was sentenced on May 15 to six years and two months in prison and ordered to pay $16,000 to her rapist's family.

But the Attorney General's Office on Saturday announced that she was only protecting herself and 'is exempt from criminal responsibility, since this Prosecutor's Office considers that she acted in legitimate defense.'

During the original hearing, Judge Mónica Osorio claimed that Ruiz could have hit Cruz in 'the head to defend herself and leaving him unconscious would have been enough.'

Ángel Carrera, Ruiz's legal attorney, applauded the latest decision that cleared the mother-of-one of any wrongdoing.

'It means that they're recognizing her innocence,' he told The Associated Press.

'It's a recognition that she simply defended herself.'

A hearing was set to take place Sunday, but it was rescheduled for Tuesday after Cruz's family and their lawyer failed to show up.

The AG's decision to drop the charges against Ruiz came one day after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that his office was going to look into the case and give her a presidential pardon her.

Her legal team, however, said it wasn't interested in López Obrador going forward with his proposal because it would have meant that Ruiz had indeed committed a crime.

On the night of May 8, 2021, Ruiz had finished work and was drinking with friends at a neighborhood bar that night when they were joined by Cruz.

He offered to walk her home and once there asked if he could spend the night because it was late and his home was too far. 

He would then persist that he be permitted to sleep in her bedroom and a frightened Ruiz relented and provided him a blanket to lay on. At one point, Cruz jumped on the bed and attacked and raped Ruiz, who fought back by punching him in the face and then choking him with a shirt until he was dead.

She stuffed Cruz's body into a bag and dragged it out to the street, where a police officer on patrol took her into custody despite Ruiz telling him that she had been raped.

A medical examination of Ruiz was never carried out, a crucial step in prosecuting sexual violence cases, her attorney Carrera said.

Instead, an officer responded that she probably wanted to have sex with the man at first and then changed her mind, the lawyer said.

Government data show that almost half of Mexican women have been victims of a sexual attack in their lifetime.

At least 3,754 - at least 10 a day - were murdered in 2022.

A third of the crimes were investigated as femicides.

Nearly half of Mexican women have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, government data say.

Carrera said he hopes the announcement of the case being dropped sets a precedent for other gender-based violence cases to be more thoroughly investigated and treated with deeper sensitivity.