Mexicans on U.S. Death Row Denied Rights, Court Says

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 guidance.... 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 -- 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.

Times staff writers Richard B. Schmitt and Maura Reynolds in Washington and Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles contributed to this report.