Executing Mexicans without due process

Texas has executed a Mexican citizen, and Americans may suffer as a result, said El Universal (Mexico) in an editorial. The state executed Edgar Tamayo Arias last week despite the pleas of not only Mexico but also the U.S. government. The case against Tamayo was tainted because he had been denied the consular assistance that the Vienna Convention requires be afforded to anyone arrested in a foreign country. The Obama administration asked Texas to stay the execution, knowing “the dire potential consequences for American citizens abroad” if it went ahead, but Texas Gov. Rick Perry simply sneered. Americans can now be executed without receiving access to their consulates, and the U.S. lacks the moral standing to complain.

Nobody questions Tamayo’s guilt, said Concepción Badillo in La Crónica de Hoy. Officer Guy Gaddis arrested Tamayo for theft outside a nightclub in 1994. Handcuffed in the back of the patrol car, the Mexican managed to reach a gun hidden in his clothes and shoot the officer three times in the back of the head. The problem is that his defense was entirely inadequate. Tamayo could barely speak English when he was arrested, and he had no idea of his rights. The Mexican Consulate only learned of the case a week before the trial—not nearly enough time to provide assistance, such as by presenting evidence that the killer “had mental problems and an IQ of 67.” Those factors should have earned him a life sentence, at least, rather than “this barbaric practice” of the death penalty.

That’s a viewpoint with real weight, said Surya Palacios in ADNPolitico.com. Tamayo’s case was among those of 51 Mexicans that the International Court of Justice ordered the U.S. to review in 2004 because the defendants hadn’t been given timely access to consular officials. President George W. Bush directed the states to review the cases, but Texas refused, and the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the White House couldn’t force the matter. The U.S. now stands in flagrant violation of the International Court of Justice, but Mexico can do nothing, because “there are no effective mechanisms to punish countries that flout the court.”

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Nothing? asked La Jornada. Why don’t our leaders get on the phone with U.S. leaders to express real anger and threaten consequences? “The death penalty is an abhorrent, barbaric, inhuman, and irreparable punishment.” Countries that practice it have given up on rehabilitating offenders, preferring to exact a biblical revenge and “running the risk of killing innocent people.” In the U.S., where the justice system is tainted by “structural racism and discrimination,” the death penalty is wielded disproportionately against blacks and Hispanics. Mexican authorities have a duty to the millions of Mexicans who live in the U.S. to “turn on the political and diplomatic pressure.”