Posted on 02/10/2003 12:17:32 PM PST by NativeNewYorker
WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Oklahoma said Monday it would proceed with
plans to execute a Mexican national, delaying for the moment a decision on
whether to honor a stay issued by the World Court.
Texas has already said it would ignore World Court death stays for Mexican
nationals on its death row.
The World Court at The Hague last week ordered both states not to execute
three Mexican nationals -- two in Texas, one in Oklahoma -- until it resolves
a suit filed by Mexico.
None of the three has an execution date.
Speaking from Oklahoma City on Monday, Assistant Attorney General Jennifer
Miller said the state would continue to prepare in the case of Oswaldo Torres
Aguillera, listed on Oklahoma's death row as Osbaldo Torres.
Miller is in charge of criminal appeals at the state Attorney General's
Office.
“We really don't have a decision to make at this point,” Miller said. “Mr.
Torres is not at the execution point ... Until we come to the point where we
need to make a decision, we're just going to carry on” with the execution
process.
Torres and a co-defendant were convicted of a double 1993 murder during a
burglary, killing a couple in their bed.
“I wouldn't say we are ignoring (the World Court order),” Miller said. “It
just does not affect us at this time. The impact of the order at this time is
just non-existent.”
Mexico claims at least 50 of its nationals on U.S. death rows were illegally
denied access to their consuls after their arrests, as required by the
international agreement known as the Vienna Convention.
The three death row inmates were singled out by the World Court for stays
because of the presumed likelihood they would be executed before Mexico's
complaint is resolved, even though none of the three has a firm death date and
some of their appeals are pending.
The case has become something of an international controversy, especially in
Mexico. Mexican President Vicente Fox canceled a summit meeting with President
George W. Bush in Texas last year over the earlier execution of a Mexican
national in the Lone Star state.
The controversy also comes at a time when the United States has become
estranged from some traditional allies on the question of war with Iraq.
Though the Bush administration has not taken a position on the execution of
the Mexican nationals, the Clinton administration filed a brief with the
Supreme Court of the United States in 1998 arguing that such death penalties
should be allowed to go forward.
The brief was filed in the case of a Paraguayan national, convicted of murder
in Virginia, who also was allegedly denied access to his consul.
At the same time, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked Virginia
not to execute the Paraguayan, Angel Francisco Breard, because it might put U.
S. citizens abroad in danger.
Virginia ignored Albright's plea, and those of several foreign governments,
and executed Breard in 1998 when a Supreme Court majority refused to block his
execution.
The two Texas inmates included in last week's World Court orders are Cesar
Fierro Reyna and Roberto Moreno Ramos.
Typical of the Euroweenies, the Court members have ignored the fact that these convicted murderers were tried and will be executed not by the United States, but by the states on whose death rows they now sit. The World Court made a basic mistake for any court -- it issued its "order" to the wrong party. Even if the "order" had any effect, it doesn't reach any individual state.
This is stupidity compounded with stupidity, and deserves to be ignored.
Congressman Billybob
Click for latest column, "Those in Peril on the Sea," now up on FR and UPI.
This organization is nothing but a satellite cabal of it's parent anti-American criminal organization -- The U.N.
Us Texans tend to be good at ignoring Euroweenies. And Vicente "Fidel" Fox.
Good. Someone needs to tell Vicente (and Bush) that Mexican nationals are getting enough special treatment as it is, and Mexican criminals will be treated in the same way as American criminals. If Vicente doesn't like that, he should tell his 10 million or so people to come back home. If Bush had any brains he would send Vicente the bill for all the social services to illegal aliens that we are FORCED to pay.
This is why the illegitimate Hague thing, and the World Trade Organization, and even the United Nations can't work in the context for a free Republic like the United States. None of these organizations recognize that we do not have a national government, but instead a limited, constitutional (well, it should be) federal government. They do not understand that the States are not simply smaller demarcations within a larger government - but are separate, sovereign entities who have a common agreement (the Constitution) with the federal government which includes some very specified areas but who reserve authority over all other areas within their borders to themselves.
The continuing move towards empowering the UN, the Hague, the WTO, and other such international organizations places pressure on the states to conform, or for the US government to assume or manufacture powers over the states that they don't have and is, in fact, an end run around the sovereignty of the States and of the nation itself.
We did sign it (back in 1951, IIRC), but with a "reservation" saying that the Court had no jurisdiction over cases involving the "internal affairs of the U.S. as defined by the U.S."-- meaning we can ignore their orders at will.
The real problem here is that we are also a signatory to the Vienna Consular Treaty of 1966, which guarantees everyone arrested in another country the right to speak to their home country's consulate as soon as they are arrested. Most local police forces in the US never heard of this treaty and routinely ignore it. The upshot is likely to be that foreign countries will start arresting Americans without notifying the US consulate. That will not be good.
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