after-words.org

Chicago Tribune | U.S. orders reviews for Mexican inmates
By Hugh Dellios and Steve Mills, Tribune staff reporters. Hugh Dellios reported from Mexico City and Steve Mills from Chicago
Published March 9, 2005

Heeding international criticism over the death penalty and hoping to safeguard Americans abroad, the Bush administration has ordered state courts to review claims by 51 Mexicans on U.S. Death Rows that their right to seek legal assistance from their own country was violated. The order, part of a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of a convicted killer in Texas, is in response to an International Court of Justice ruling last year that found that state courts had violated the Mexicans' international rights to have access to consular officials.

Though challenged by officials in Bush's home state of Texas, the move was celebrated by the Mexican government and death-penalty opponents, who hope it will help the 51 Mexicans escape Death Row in seven U.S. states. [...] The government of Mexico, where the constitution prohibits the death penalty, sued the U.S. before the international court last year. It argued that the trials of the Mexicans could have had different outcomes if consular officials had been able to translate for them, help them understand their rights and bring in character witnesses from their hometowns.

Texas begs to differ

In the wake of the Hague court ruling in March 2004, two Mexicans--one in Oklahoma, one in Arkansas--were taken off Death Row last year. But other state officials, especially in Texas, have frequently dismissed the Hague ruling. As far back as 1997, when Bush was governor of Texas, his top legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, now the U.S. attorney general, wrote a memo suggesting the Vienna Convention did not apply to Texas because the state was not a "signatory" to the treaty.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Texas attorney general's office indicated that the state would likely contest efforts by defense attorneys to schedule new hearings in the death penalty cases. "We respectfully believe the executive determination exceeds the constitutional bounds for federal authority," spokesman Jerry Strickland said in a statement. "The State of Texas believes no international court supersedes the laws of Texas or the laws of the United States."