The World Court ordered the United States Wednesday to stay executions of three MexicansOMG, I'm laughing uncontrollably! They did what?
Posted on 02/05/2003 1:14:48 PM PST by kattracks
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The World Court ordered the United States Wednesday to stay executions of three Mexicans -- two on death row in President Bush's state of Texas -- and reserved the right to intervene in dozens more cases.
Mexico took Washington to the International Court of Justice at the Hague last month, saying more than 50 of its nationals on death row should get retrials because U.S. authorities breached an international treaty by failing to tell them of their rights to consular help after their arrests.
With the whole case likely to be lengthy, Mexico asked the highest U.N. court to instruct urgent stays of execution for 51 men. Judges ruled that just three were at imminent risk, though said it might order similar stays for others "if appropriate" before issuing its final judgment in the proceedings.
Mexico's court action reflects deep disquiet among some of Washington's closest allies over capital punishment, which has led to protests from leading European states and Pope John Paul.
The United States and Japan are the only rich industrialized nations to execute convicted criminals. The last person executed in the European Union was guillotined in France in 1977.
The case is the highest level bout of a long-running fight between the United States and its poorer southern neighbor over the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
The international treaty obliges local authorities to inform an arrested person without delay of his right to speak to consular officials from his country.
"I wouldn't look at it as a defeat or a victory," U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands Clifford Sobel told Reuters after the decision. "The order clearly does not address the merits of the case."
TWO DECADES ON DEATH ROW
Mexico wants retrials for all its 54 nationals -- four of them mentally ill or retarded -- who were sentenced to death in 10 states in the United States. Three of the 54 were condemned in Illinois, however, where the state governor last month commuted all death sentences in his state.
"The United States of America must take all measures necessary to ensure Mr. Cesar Roberto Fierro Reyna, Mr. Roberto Moreno Ramos and Mr. Osvaldo Torres Aguilera are not executed pending final judgment in these proceedings," Court President Gilbert Guillaume said in the binding order Wednesday.
The three men -- two of whom were being held in Texas and the third in Oklahoma -- "are at risk of execution in the coming months or possibly even weeks," Guillaume said.
Fierro Reyna has been on death row since 1980.
"The decision is welcome, certainly. It comes in the line we have asked for and it certainly reinforces international law," said Santiago Onate, Mexico's ambassador to the Netherlands.
"We are looking for full redress. That we haven't had now. What we have now is...an order from the court that will prevent any execution until the court decides on the merits," Onate told reporters after the sitting.
The United States argued that Mexico neither proved its rights under the Vienna Convention were harmed nor that there was an urgent need for the emergency injunction.
Such an injunction would interfere with the United States' sovereign right to administer its criminal justice system and would mark an unwarranted intrusion by the court into U.S. affairs, it argued at a World Court hearing on January 21.
The World Court ordered the United States Wednesday to stay executions of three MexicansOMG, I'm laughing uncontrollably! They did what?
Exactly. Of course if the feds do try to interfere, how many years will it be before this gets to the SCOTUS?
LOL .... the governor should light one of these boys up in an electric chair just to piss them off.
Did these guys tell the US authorities that they're Mexican citizens? If not, then the US authorities were bound to assume that they were Americans (since illegal entry into the country is a crime, and they must be presumed innocent of that crime until proven guilty).
The US, if it hasn't already, should require the World Court to rigorously justify its claims to jurisdiction in any such matter on a case by case basis to the US's full satisfaction before making any attempt to impose any injunction whatsoever on the US legal system, otherwise the World Court is doing nothing more than wildly exceeding its jurisdiction, abusing its mandate and seriously compromising its juridical authority by exhibiting a total lack of compliance with US Constitutional and legal requirements in illegally attempting to play international power politics.
And make sure the world knows full well how the World Court is unlawfully & capriciously attempting to obstruct established US determinative legal process if it fails to comply with the above.
Hell; strap all three of 'em in...
Yeah, let's see who is gonna issue a valid stay in these cases. Is Ashcroft gonna ask the Supremes for a Stay?
So9
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