Texas Snubs World Court on Execution Stays

Texas Snubs World Court on Execution Stays
Thu February 6, 2003 07:28 PM ET
By C. Bryson Hull

HOUSTON (Reuters) - An unrepentant Texas said on Thursday it would ignore a World Court order demanding it stay the executions of two Mexicans, a decision likely to create more friction between the United States and its allies over capital punishment.

The International Court of Justice at The Hague on Wednesday ordered the U.S. to stay the executions of three Mexicans and reserved the right to intervene in dozens of other cases.

Mexico brought the World Court case last month, arguing that 54 of its citizens on death row should get retrials. It accused U.S. police of violating an international treaty by failing to tell the men of their right to consular assistance after being arrested.

The World Court said it acted in three cases where the men were at risk of execution before the lengthy case is finished.

Two of those affected -- Cesar Robert Fierro Reyna and Roberto Moreno Ramos -- are in Texas and the third, Osvaldo Torres Aguilera, is in Oklahoma. None of the three has an execution date yet.

The State Department is reviewing the order and has not said whether Washington will order Texas and Oklahoma to stay the executions. The U.S. argued the order would interfere with its sovereign right to administer its criminal justice system.

"According to our reading of the law and the treaty, there is no authority for the federal government or this World Court to prohibit Texas from exercising the laws passed by our legislature," said Gene Acuna, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The state is by far the nation's death penalty leader.

ADEQUATE SAFEGUARDS

Perry believes that state and federal courts provide adequate safeguards and are the appropriate forums in which to hear "issues such as consular notification on a case-by-case basis," Acuna said. Orders from those courts are the only ones Texas will follow, he said.

Jennifer Miller, the chief of criminal appeals for the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office, said the state was reviewing the World Court order.

Torres has several avenues of appeal open to him, including the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, she said.

"He is not in the process at this time where we will be seeking an execution date," Miller said. "He still has the opportunity to ask for a rehearing in that case."

Texas will wait until all of the appeals in the Fierro and Ramos cases are complete. But an inmate is often given a date and is even brought into the death house while last-minute appeals work their way through the courts.

A U.S. refusal to heed the World Court could worsen already-tense relations with Mexico on the issue.

Mexican President Vicente Fox angrily canceled a planned meeting with President Bush in Texas last year after the state ignored Mexican pleas for clemency for Javier Medina.

Texas, the only U.S. state to have once been an independent country, has long resisted external interference in its affairs and has a history of ignoring pleas for clemency.

On Tuesday, Texas executed John "Jackie" Elliott, a dual British-American citizen whose cause was taken up by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, members of parliament and high-ranking British clerics.

He was the 296th inmate executed in Texas since 1982, four years after national death penalty ban was lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The United States is the only Western democracy to carry out the death penalty. (Additional reporting by Ben Fenwick in Oklahoma City)

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