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WASHINGTON — In a 5-to-4 decision that split along ideological lines, the Supreme Court on Thursday evening rebuffed a request from the Obama administration that it stay the execution of a Mexican citizen on death row in Texas. The inmate, Humberto Leal Garcia Jr., was executed about an hour later. ……On Thursday, in an unsigned majority opinion, the Supreme Court said that Congress had had plenty of time to act and that the court would not now “prohibit a state from carrying out a lawful judgment in light of unenacted legislation.” “Our task,” the majority wrote, “is to rule on...

Humberto Leal , a Mexican illegal alien was finally executed Thursday evening for the 1994 rape-slaying of 16-year-old Adria Sauceda, whose brutalized nude body was found hours after he left a San Antonio street party with her. She was bludgeoned with a chunk of asphalt. Leal was executed after the U.S. Supreme Court (by a 5-4 vote) turned down a appeal by President Barack Obama to stop the execution due to complaints by the Mexican Government and the U.N. justice court that he had not properly received “consular access” before his trial. As with his lawsuit against Arizona over its...

A Mexican national was executed Thursday for the rape-slaying of a teenager after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down a White House-supported appeal to spare him in a death penalty case where Texas justice triumphed over international treaty concerns. Humberto Leal, 38, received lethal injection for the 1994 murder of Adria Sauceda. She was fatally bludgeoned with a piece of asphalt. Leal was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m. EDT (2221 GMT).

Texas is set to execute on Thursday Mexican national Humberto Leal Garcia for the rape and murder of a teenage girl, defying pleas by the Mexican government and President Barack Obama to delay it because his consular rights were violated

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a last-minute stay of execution in a Texas case involving a Mexican national who was not told of his right to diplomatic counsel when arrested.

The case of a Mexican man scheduled to be executed on Thursday in Texas threatens to disrupt U.S. diplomatic relations abroad and creates a politically volatile dilemma for Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who is considering a run for president. Unless Perry or the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes to stay the execution, Texas plans to execute Humberto Leal Jr. at 6 p.m. Central Time for the 1994 murder of 16-year-old Adria Sauceda. The International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that the United States violated the rights of Leal and more than three dozen other Mexican nationals on death row because...

<p>The Obama administration is taking the unusual step of asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop Texas from executing a Mexican citizen who was convicted and sentenced to die for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl.</p> <p>The administration is asking the court to delay the July 7 execution of Humberto Leal, 38, for as long as six months to give Congress time to consider legislation that would directly affect Leal's case.</p>

Barack Obama Asks For Texas And Rick Perry To Spare Mexican The Death Penalty Texas is preparing to execute a Mexican citizen for a gruesome 1994 murder on Thursday despite an appeal by Barack Obama to spare him because he was not granted the consular help required by international law. By Toby Harnden 05 Jul 2011 Humberto Leal, 38, a native of Monterrey, Mexico was convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of Adria Sauceda, 16, whose naked body was found with a large stick protruding from her. She had been bitten and her head crushed by a lump of...

A top United Nations official is urging the governor of Texas to call off the execution of a Mexican national convicted of murder because he was not told of his right for diplomatic advice when he was arrested, according to Reuters. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay is calling for Gov. Rick Perry to commute the sentence to life in prison for Humberto Leal Garcia. Garcia was convicted of raping and killing a 16-year-old girl in February 1998. "The lack of consular assistance and advice raises concerns about whether or not Mr. Leal Garcia's right to a fair...

The Golden Rule of life also applies to the tricky business of international relations. What we do to non-Americans in our country we can reasonably expect to be done unto Americans in other countries. It is for that reason that Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles — both in the uncommon position of making a decision with international impact — should commute or postpone the death sentence of Humberto Leal, a Mexican raised in Texas, scheduled to die July 7 for the 1994 murder of Adria Sauceda, 16, in Bexar County. The key issue in...

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia on Friday beheaded a Sudanese man convicted of murdering a compatriot in the capital Riyadh, the interior ministry announced.

(Reuters) - An Ohio man was executed on Tuesday morning after the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, officials said. Daniel Lee Bedford, 63, was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday morning for a double homicide in Cincinnati in 1984, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. His defense attorneys had argued for clemency, citing dementia and mental retardation. A federal judge had granted Bedford a stay of execution Monday, but this was lifted by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal. Bedford was convicted of shooting...

Mississippi is set to execute later on Tuesday a man convicted in 1999 of slaying four people, the first inmate in the state to be put to death using a new drug as part of the lethal injection. Benny Joe Stevens is scheduled to be executed shortly after 6 p.m. local time on Tuesday, according to Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. He will be executed using the drug pentobarbital, a sedative often used to euthanize animals, because of a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental. Several states have switched to pentobarbital because of the shortage.

South Carolina on Friday executed a man who strangled his cellmate, using a new combination of lethal injection drugs for the first time. Jeffrey Motts, 36, was declared dead at 6:17 p.m. He was given the sedative pentobarbital instead of sodium thiopental as part of the lethal three-drug combination because federal agents seized the state's supply as part of a nationwide investigation into whether prisons obtained the drugs legally from England. Motts was sentenced to death for killing his cellmate at a state prison in Greenville County in 2005. He was already serving a life sentence for killing two elderly...

On the eve of his execution, a Texas death row is saying that he does not want to be the state’s guinea pig for the use of a new drug for lethal injection. Cleve Foster, who is accused of murdering Sudanese refugee Nyaneur Pal in 2002, is set to be executed on Tuesday, but he doesn’t want to be the first Texan to be executed with the new drug pentobarbital.

A man convicted of killing two convenience store employees in a 1989 robbery was executed by the state of Arizona after he lost an appeal that raised questions about the drugs used in putting him to death by lethal injection. A jury convicted Eric John King in 1990 of two counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of convenience store clerk Ron Barman and the store's security guard, Richard Butts, during a robbery that netted the killer $72. King, 47, was executed at a state prison in Florence, Arizona, southeast of Phoenix, according to state Attorney General Tom Horne....

In the course of my inquiries into many of history's more recent controversies -- JFK, Waco, Vince Foster, Oklahoma City, Ron Brown, TWA Flight 800, 9/11, Obama's birth, the authorship of Obama's books -- I have come to see that when there are actual conspiracies afoot, they fall into two general categories, conspiracies of execution and conspiracies of concealment. Conspiracies of execution, at least on any kind of scale, are rare in American history. The nature of our national character and the openness of our political culture war against them. Conspiracies of concealment are another matter. When officials fail in...

Tucker Carlson says Michael Vick should have been killed for cruelty to dogs. On last night’s Hannity on FNC, Carlson was filling in for the vacationing Sean Hannity (going on two weeks, now) when the conversation turned to Vick during the "Great American Panel" segment. More specifically, the conversation centered on Barack Obama’s recent support to the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles for giving Vick a second chance. While that is an issue in and of itself, Carlson eventually took the conversation into no man’s land by saying that he wished Vick would have been executed for killing dogs. Interestingly,...

The state of Oklahoma is planning to execute death row inmates with drugs intended for use on animals. Lawmakers want to switch away from the only brand of anaesthetic that has been used in the US for lethal injections because there is not enough to go around. The replacement is likely to attract controversy because it is currently used by vets to anesthetise animals for operations. Other states are watching closely and may well follow suit, but such a move is likely to face a challenge from human rights groups to ensure that it is safe to use.

The decision of the Iraqi war crimes tribunal to sentence Tariq Aziz to death is one that needs to be vigorously opposed for several reasons. Although it is true that, as Saddam Hussein's longtime henchman and deputy, he is morally tainted with some of the most appalling crimes in modern history, Aziz was not, in fact, condemned to execution for his part in the annexation of Kuwait, the destruction of the Marsh Arabs, or the attempted genocide against Iraq's Kurdish minority. (Indeed, there is some evidence that he advised his boss against the insane attack on Kuwait in 1990.) For...