Date: Fri Jan 10 13:17:54 2003 (EST)

To: members@l..., cla@i...

Subject: Fwd: Mexico at the ICJ: early media coverage

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Mark and Heather Warren wrote:

Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 09:18:13 -0500

From: Mark and Heather Warren

To: aiwarren@y...

Subject: Mexico at the ICJ: early media coverage

Mexico Challenges U.S. On Death Penalty Cases

By Kevin Sullivan

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, January 10, 2003; Page A17

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 9 -- Mexico filed a complaint against the United States in the International Court of Justice today charging that American officials have violated the rights of all 54 Mexicans on death row in the United States and asking that their executions be commuted.

In its filing with the U.N. court in The Hague, Mexico argued that the United States violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which guarantees people access to their country's diplomatic missions when accused of a crime in a foreign country.

Juan Manuel Gomez Robledo, the Foreign Ministry lawyer who filed the complaint, said state and local courts in the United States regularly assign Mexican defendants public defenders who "speak little or no Spanish and have no experience in death penalty cases." He said if the courts followed the treaty, Mexican consulates would provide defendants Spanish-speaking lawyers who are well-versed in U.S. capital cases, which would greatly improve chances of a fair trial.

"It's the difference between life and death," Gomez said.

Mexico has asked the court to recommend that the United States stay all 54 executions until the court rules.

It has also asked the court to recommend that the death sentences be reduced to life in prison and that the men be granted new trials with lawyers provided by the Mexican government.

Of the 54 Mexicans on death row, 28 are in California, 16 are in Texas and the others are in Oregon, Oklahoma, Illinois, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Arkansas and Ohio, Gomez said.

A U.S. government official said 100,000 Mexican nationals are in U.S. prisons, so sheer numbers make it difficult to comply with the Vienna Convention. In addition, he said, because the United States has so many local law enforcement agencies, it has been difficult to educate all of them about the treaty.

Today's filing follows an emotional case last August in which Texas executed a Mexican man, Javier Suarez Medina, after President Vicente Fox called President Bush and the state's governor, Rick Perry, to argue that Suarez's rights had been violated. Mary Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the European Union and various human rights groups also asked that Texas stay the execution pending a review of Mexico's objections.

But Suarez, who killed an undercover U.S. drug agent in 1988, was executed by lethal injection.

The case became a national crusade in Mexico, and Fox, with the backing of all political parties here, canceled a scheduled visit with Bush at his Crawford, Tex., ranch to show his displeasure. Mexico has no death penalty -- or even a punishment of life in prison -- and many Mexicans believe capital punishment is disproportionately applied to Mexicans and other minorities in the United States.

"What Mexico has done here is very important, and the people who are going to benefit most from this are Americans," said Sandra Babcock, a Minnesota lawyer working with the Mexican government.

Babcock said governments of the 164 other countries that have signed the treaty are less likely to honor it if the United States ignores it, which could have grave consequences for Americans arrested abroad.

Babcock said that although the State Department has tried to educate local law enforcement agencies about the treaty, there are no sanctions in U.S. law for violators.

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Australian Broadcasting Corporation Friday, January 10, 2003. Posted: 15:43:11 (AEDT) Mexico seeks intervention in US death sentences

Mexico has asked the International Court of Justice to intervene in the cases of 54 Mexicans sentenced to death in the United States.

Mexico's Foreign Ministry alleges the US violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to inform the Mexican nationals of their rights to assistance from their own country at the time of their arrest.

The Ministry says it has asked the International Court in the Hague to order the US to reconsider the sentences of the 54 on death row, and abstain from executing any of them.

Mexico prohibits the death penalty and had clashed repeatedly with the United States on the issue.

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Mexico Seeks U.S. Death Row Intervention

Thu Jan 9, 9:15 PM ET

By LISA J. ADAMS, Associated Press Writer

MEXICO CITY - Mexico alleges that all 54 Mexican inmates on death row in the United States were denied access to consular officials, and asked the World Court on Thursday to intervene.

The foreign relations department claims that U.S. officials violated the 1963 Vienna Convention of Consular Relations, the department said in a statement. The convention requires authorities to inform detained foreign nationals that they have the right to assistance from the consulates of their native countries.

The 54 Mexican nationals "didn't receive the timely assistance from Mexican consular representatives that could have avoided application of the death penalty," the statement said.

A spokesman with the U.S. State Department had no comment Thursday about the appeal.

The issue is an important and sensitive one for Mexicans. Mexican law prohibits the death penalty and Mexico won't extradite its own citizens to face criminal charges in the United States in cases where the death penalty or a life sentence may be applied.

In August, President Vicente Fox (news - web sites) canceled a scheduled visit with President Bush (news - web sites ) after Bush refused to pardon a Mexican national on death row in Texas. There are more than 3,500 people on death row in the United States, the Department of Justice (news - web sites) says. Fox contended that the prisoner, Javier Suarez Medina, was never told he could contact the Mexican consulate for help after his 1988 arrest. U.S. officials said that it wasn't clear if Suarez, who had spent most of his life in the United States, was even Mexican. Medina was executed in August.

> Mexican officials asked the World Court, in the > Hague (news - web sites), Netherlands, to order U.S. authorities to review the convictions and death sentences of the 54 inmates. It also asked the court to ensure that the prisoners are not executed or scheduled to be put to death until their cases are resolved.

The foreign relations department said it submitted its petition to the court because it had "exhausted every recourse" with local and federal authorities in the United States and other international agencies.

"Despite those efforts ... in the past decade five Mexicans have been executed," the release said.

The statement made clear that Mexico does not want to damage relations with the United States.

"Mexico's petition does not constitute a political confrontation that will affect bilateral relations with the United States," the document said. "It seeks to obligate the state and local authorities to comply with their obligations in terms of consular notification."

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Law Union of Ontario