Los Angeles Times
April 1, 2004
By Chris Kraul
Times Staff
Writer
MEXICO CITY Ñ In
a rebuke of the U.S. legal system, the International Court of Justice ruled
Wednesday that 51 Mexicans on death row in California and other U.S. states
were illegally deprived of consular assistance and that their sentences should
immediately be "reviewed and reconsidered." It was unclear, however,
whether the decision would spare the prisoners' lives or even force new trials.
Federal officials
said they were studying the ruling by the Hague court, the principal judicial
body of the United Nations, but the United States has refused in the past to
abide by its decisions. Officials in Oklahoma and Texas, where executions of
Mexicans are imminent, were defiant.
The decision
affects 27 Mexicans on California's death row, but a spokesman for Atty. Gen.
Bill Lockyer said his office had no immediate comment on the merits of the
ruling.
Though the effect
of the court's decision remains unknown, the Mexican government and human
rights advocates hailed it as a triumph for international law, and Mexican
officials vowed to mount fresh challenges to the death sentences case by case.
"The
international court in The Hague has supported Mexico in the question of human
rights," said President Vicente Fox, an opponent of the death penalty.
"They have agreed that our citizens have been given the death penalty in a
process that did not respect the law."
Mexico argued
before the court that the condemned Mexicans were not advised of their right
under the 1963 Vienna Convention of Consular Relations to request "without
delay" help from their embassies or consulates.
That deprived
them of access to services that Mexican consulates provide, such as legal and
financial assistance, and even visas for witnesses. "That's really vital
when you are talking about a fair trial, particularly when people's lives are
on the line," said Sandra Babcock, a Minneapolis attorney who argued
Mexico's case at the court, based in The Hague.
"The United
States fought tooth and nail in court to say claims weren't credible,"
Babcock said. "But the court vindicated what Mexico was saying all along.
Not just Mexicans but people all over the world are detained unjustly, and they
need the help of their consulate."
While admitting
that foreign detainees have not always been advised of their right to consular aid,
U.S. officials consistently argued during the proceedings that the Mexican case
was an intrusion of U.S. sovereignty.
In Washington on
Wednesday, State Department officials said they were reviewing the decision.
National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said: "The case covered
more than 50 individuals in a number of states. The court's judgment is complex
and deals with many issues."
The first test of
the court's decision could come in Oklahoma, where Osvaldo Torres Aguilera, who
was convicted in a 1996 double homicide, is scheduled to be put to death May
18. State officials said Wednesday that they were prepared to defend any
challenge to the planned execution.
Drew Edmondson,
Oklahoma's attorney general, said in a statement that under the international
court's ruling, attorneys for Torres must now show that the involvement of the
Mexican government would have changed the outcome of his trial.
"Mexico has
known of the Torres case since March 1996, even before his direct appeal to the
Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals," Edmondson said. "In eight years,
Mexico has brought no claim of prejudice."
Edmondson added
that "this office is ready to respond to any attempts to delay
justice."
A spokesman for
the attorney general of Texas, where 17 Mexican citizens are condemned to die,
was also defiant.
"We have
held steadfast prior to the ruling that it has no bearing on Texas," the
spokesman said. "We have contacted the State Department to get their
guidanceÉ. But we still hold to our previous position."
In California,
attorney general's spokesman Nathan Barankin said the office needed to complete
a review with district attorneys around the state "to see how many Mexican
nationals may have had their rights violated under the terms of the treaty."
Barankin said he
expected that defense lawyers for the individuals in question would raise the
issue in state or federal court and lawyers for the attorney general would
respond in court filings. "We also are waiting to see what the U.S.
government is doing," he said.
Several legal
scholars interviewed by The Times said the decision on whether to reopen the
cases shouldn't belong to the states.
Anne-Marie
Slaughter, an international law expert at Princeton University, said the
federal government has the responsibility to force states to stay executions
when foreign nationals are denied their rights under the Vienna Convention, a
treaty that under the U.S. Constitution has the force of law.
"We signed
that treaty not because we want to cede our sovereignty but because we want to
make sure our citizens are fairly treated when they travel to or live in
foreign countries," said Slaughter, president of the American Society of
International Law.
The federal
government has refused to enforce the court's rulings before, however. In 1998
and 2001, the international court responded to similar appeals by Paraguay and
Germany by ordering Virginia and Arizona to temporarily halt executions of
those countries' citizens on death row. But the executions went ahead.
Wednesday's
verdict came after 14 months of proceedings. Although the court did not go so
far as to agree with Mexico that all 51 death sentences should be commuted, it
ordered that the U.S. government make "reparation in adequate form"
to involve at the very least "review and reconsideration of the
convictions and sentences of the Mexican nationals."
Fox has been
outspoken against capital punishment, and in August 2002 he canceled a trip to
Texas to visit President Bush to protest that state's execution of a Mexican
citizen, Javier Suarez Medina.
Although the
death penalty is still on Mexico's books, there has not been an execution in
decades. Fox recently moved to eliminate the death penalty from the military
penal code.
Amnesty
International and other human rights organizations lauded Wednesday's ruling.
"This sends
a message that the United States must practice what it preaches and abide by
these basic standards. We should show we are willing to follow the same laws
and standards we would impose on others," said Jennie Green, an attorney
with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.
Pasadena attorney
Marilee Marshall, who represents California death row inmate and Mexican
citizen Alfredo Reyes Valdez, agreed.
"This ruling
is significant with respect to a lot of people," she said. "It would
be nice to see the rights of foreign nationals respected here, just as we want
to see the rights of our citizens respected in other countries. These treaties
are very important."
Valdez was
convicted of murder in Pomona in 1989 and sentenced to death. The California
Supreme Court upheld the sentence this year on a 4-3 vote. Marshall said she
raised the issue of Valdez's Vienna Convention rights being violated in her
appeal papers and plans to raise it in a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court
that she is drafting now.
Either the
California Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court "can still address this
issue for him," Marshall said.
Los Angeles
attorney Michael J. Lightfoot, who represents another Mexican on California's
death row, Carlos Jaime Avena, said: "It's hard to argue with the
rationale of the international court Ñ if you are going to execute foreign
nationals, make sure you honor all their rights, including those guaranteed by
treaty."
Avena has been on
death row in California since 1982 for a double murder.
He is challenging
the constitutionality of his conviction in federal court in Los Angeles and
violation of his Vienna Convention rights is one of the pending issues,
Lightfoot said.
Some observers,
however, rejected the notion that Avena and others are entitled to more
hearings.
"These
murderers were provided with a lawyer and tried and convicted under a higher
standard of justice than they would have faced in their own country," said
Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a
conservative advocacy group based in Sacramento that favors the death penalty.
"How ironic that their claim before the world court is that they were
denied assistance from their own government."
Although the Los
Angeles Police Department and several others have become more conscious of
informing detainees of Vienna Convention rights, experts agree the law is not
clearly understood in many of the 26,000 police departments nationwide.
To remove all doubt,
attorney Babcock said the reading of Vienna Convention rights by police to
foreign detainees should become routine.
Copyright
2004 Los Angeles Times
------------------------------------------------------------------------
New York Times
April 1, 2004
A Court Decision Is One Thing; Enforcing It Is Another
By ADAM LIPTAK
In ruling yesterday
that the United States must provide Mexicans on death row with a fresh opportunity
to argue that their convictions should be overturned, the World Court set
itself on a collision course with American courts and officials.
Over several days last year, lawyers from the State and Justice Departments
mounted a vigorous defense to Mexico's claims, imploring the court not to
intrude into the American criminal justice system.
Mexico's demands,
which included a request that the court void all the convictions, represented,
American lawyers said in a court filing, "an unjustified, unwise and
ultimately unacceptable intrusion into the United States criminal justice
system."
The court did
not go as far as Mexico wanted. Though it found violations of the convention
in 51 cases, it declined to void any convictions and insisted only on "review
and reconsideration" of the claims made by the death row inmates. The
question is whether that middle ground will be applied by American courts.
Treaties are,
under the Constitution, "the supreme law of the land." But American
courts have been quite reluctant to apply rulings of international tribunals.
The court ruled,
moreover, that American courts may not rely on a doctrine known as procedural
default to decline to hear arguments not raised at trial. That is at odds
with recent death penalty jurisprudence in the United States, much of it based
on a 1996 federal law that limits what kinds of arguments may be made if they
were not raised early on.
The international
court also rejected the United States' contention that it may comply with
the ruling by allowing death row inmates to raise claims during clemency proceedings
before state governors. Only reconsiderations by courts count, the international
court said.
The court also made a prospective suggestion, saying that a sensible way to
avoid Vienna Convention problems is to alert foreigners to their rights by
adding a sentence to the standard Miranda warning.
The first case
in which the ruling on Wednesday may have an impact is that of Osbaldo Torres,
who is to be executed May 18 in Oklahoma for his role in the murder of a couple
in front of their children during a burglary in 1993. Mr. Torres has exhausted
his appeals.
Mark Henricksen, a lawyer for Mr. Torres, said he expected the state to grant
a hearing. "We're hopeful that Oklahoma will honor the decision"
of the international court, he said. "In our view it's an unappealable
order."
The state's attorney
general, Drew Edmondson, suggested in a statement yesterday that further judicial
proceedings were indeed in order. "It is now up to Mr. Torres to convince
a court that assistance from the Mexican government could have changed the
outcome of his trial," he said.
But Mr. Edmondson added that there was no evidence that Mr. Torres's case
was prejudiced by his inability to meet with Mexican officials. "This
office is ready to respond to any attempt to delay justice," he said.
Mexico has a legal
assistance program in the United States because, its diplomats say, Mexicans
are often bewildered by American procedures and many speak poor English. Mexican
lawyers told the court that in the cases when consular protection was allowed,
life sentences had been more likely than death sentences.
Sandra L. Babcock,
one of the lawyers who represented Mexico in The Hague, said the Torres case
may mark a turning point.
"This is going to be a great case to see if the United States is going
to comply with this decision in good faith," she said.
Copyright 2004
The New York Times Company