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[snip] Williams: Governor Perry...Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. (APPLAUSE) Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent? Perry answered: "No sir," pointed out that death-row convicts are entitled to extensive appeals, and crisply declared: "In the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice." [snip] [E.D.]Kain implies...

Thumbing his nose at President Obama, Texas's Republican Governor Rick Perry allowed the Thursday evening execution of a Mexican national, even though the action violated U.S. treaty obligations under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to U.S. states. The Vienna Convention stipulates, among other things, that citizens of one country arrested in another have the right to consult, "without delay," with their own country's consulate, and to be so informed of that right by the arresting authority. If the arrested person so requests, the police must take the initiative by, for example, faxing pertinent information to the prisoner's consulate....

..THE RAPING AND BLUDGEONING THAT AMERICANS WON'T DO Obama bizarrely decided to intervene in a death penalty case in Texas on behalf of a rapist and murderer, also international law. In 1994, he kidnapped 16-year-old Adria Sauceda, raped her with a large stick, and bludgeoned her to death with a piece of asphalt. Just remember. Obama will not pay your mortgage. But if you rape and bludgeon a 16 year old girl to death... he'll be there for you. The San Francisco Chronicle asks, "Is Rick Perry Killing His Way To The White House?". Here's a better headline. "Is Obama...

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay accused the United States of breaking international law when Texas executed Mexican citizen Humberto Leal Garcia Jr. Thursday night. The execution sparked controversy after the International Court of Justice in the Hague determined in 2004 that the U.S. had violated the Vienna Convention when officials failed to tell foreign inmates about their right to visit their consular officials. But the U.S. Supreme Court voted yesterday that Texas could go ahead with the execution, even over the objection of President Barack Obama. Pillay said today the execution "raises particular legal concerns" about the...

UNITED NATIONS, July 8 (UPI) -- The Texas execution of a Mexican national puts the United States in violation of international law, the U.N. human rights chief said Friday. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said federations like the United States have a responsibility to ensure that individual states "respect the international responsibilities assumed by the country as a whole." ...."I am very disappointed that neither the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles nor the governor took steps open to them to prevent this breach of the U.S. obligations under international law from occurring," Pillay said.

Texas has executed a Mexican national for the kidnapping and rape of a 16-year-old San Antonio girl. Garcia, 38, was put to death less than two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-to-4 vote, rejected pleas from the Obama administration for a delay to avoid what it called serious international repercussions…. Before Garcia's trial, Texas authorities failed to inform him of his right to speak with officers from the Mexican consulate and failed to inform the consulate that a Mexican national had been arrested.

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...