Eager to execute foreigners

“Why does the U.S. even sign treaties if it has no intention of abiding by them?” asked Carlos González Correa in the Mexico City La Crónica de Hoy. The state of Texas executed Mexican citizen Humberto Leal García last week for the 1994 rape and murder of a teenage girl. There’s little doubt of his guilt. His teeth marks were found on the girl’s body, her blood was in his car and on his shirt, and, most damningly, his own brother testified that he had confessed to the killing. But Leal was never given access to Mexican consular officials, who could have arranged for an adequate defense that may have spared him the death penalty. Under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the U.S. is a party, foreign nationals must be given such access, but Texas argued that the treaty did not apply to the states, and the Supreme Court refused to stay the execution. Leal may have been a monster, but killing him illegally was no less a crime. His last words were, “Viva México. Viva México. Viva México.”

That would be touching, except that Leal “didn’t actually see himself as Mexican” until long after he was convicted, said Sergio Sarmiento in the Monterrey El Norte. He’d lived in the U.S. from the age of 2 and considered himself American. That’s why it never occurred to him to seek consular assistance. It seems odd, not to mention hypocritical, that Mexico would be so vehement in defending this man. The French have been complaining for years that one of their nationals, Florence Cassez, convicted here of kidnapping in a terribly flawed trial, was denied access to the French consulate. But you don’t see Mexico offering to retry her.

But Leal isn’t the only Mexican whose life is at stake in the U.S., said Silvia Otero in the Mexico City El Universal. Fifty other Mexican nationals who also received no consular assistance are sitting on death row. In many cases, they had no legal advice before their trials with court-appointed attorneys, and some were “coerced into confessions.” One, for example, signed a murder confession after being told that police were going to arrest his parents. Several are mentally retarded. For the Mexicans still on death row, at least, “there is still hope.” A U.S. senator has introduced legislation that would require the states to comply with a 2004 International Court of Justice ruling that ordered a review of their cases.

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Don’t hold your breath, said Toby Harnden in the London Telegraph. That legislation has “little chance of passing.” And Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who refused to halt Leal’s execution, is likely to allow his state to kill more jailed Mexicans. Perry, after all, was unpersuaded by the pleas of both President Obama and former President George W. Bush, who argued that executing Leal without due process would endanger American citizens abroad. Perry is hardly unique in his indifference. When Bill Clinton was Arkansas’s governor, he permitted the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, who “was so mentally impaired that he saved the pudding from his last meal so he could eat it later.” Bush famously refused to pardon Karla Faye Tucker, a born-again Christian who had publicly repented of her crime. For American politicians, it seems, putting criminals to death has no downside.