March 28 TEXAS: Texas tops U.S. states in executing foreigners The issue of international law and foreign opposition to the death penalty long has dogged capital punishment in the nation's most active death penalty state. 6 foreign nationals have been executed in Texas, more than any other state, since executions resumed here in 1982. 4 of the 6 claimed Mexican citizenship. In several of those cases, courts rejected arguments that the offenders at the time of their arrest were denied help from their individual foreign consulates as stipulated under provision of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which the United States has signed. More than 2 dozen foreign-born inmates - at least 16 from Mexico - are on Texas death row, including one woman, Linda Carty, a native of the British Virgin Islands. The population is second only to California. The case of one of the Texas men, Jose Medellin, went before the U.S. Supreme Court for oral arguments Monday, with lawyers for the prisoner contending he improperly was denied legal help from the Mexican consulate when he was arrested for the 1993 slayings of 2 Houston girls, Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16. "I think they do have certain rights under the treaty to be informed," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, said Monday of foreigners arrested in this country. "Perhaps the Mexican government may have made a difference when it comes to sentencing, providing legal help." "Medellin voluntarily confessed to the brutal gang rape and murder of two teenage girls," said Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for the Texas attorney generals office. "He was convicted after a fair trial, applying U.S. and Texas law. The state of Texas believes no international court supersedes the laws of Texas or the laws of the United States." A ruling from the Supreme Court is expected later in the year. One Texas inmate from Mexico, Cesar Fierro, has been on death row for more than 26 years for a 1979 slaying in El Paso, making him among the longest-serving death row prisoners in the nation. His case has been cited by the United Nations' World Court as an example of what the Supreme Court was hearing Monday. In 1993, Ramon Montoya became the first Mexican executed in Texas in 51 years and the 1st from his country to be executed in the United States since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume. The lethal injection of Montoya, 38, sparked protests in Mexico and denunciations from the government there. Montoya was convicted of killing a Dallas police officer in 1983. Similar demonstrations and Mexican government opposition failed to stop the 1997 execution of Ireneo Montoya, 30, who was not related to Ramon Montoya. Appeals courts rejected arguments Ireneo Montoya was not allowed to contact the Mexican consulate after he was arrested and signed a confession to the slaying of a Cameron County motorist in 1985. Joseph Faulder, 61, executed in 1999 for a slaying 24 years earlier during a burglary in Gladewater in East Texas, said he was from British Columbia in Canada and was denied help from the Canadian consulate. Evidence in his unsuccessful appeals showed authorities knew he was from Canada but ignored the treaty that specifies a foreigner when arrested should be promptly informed of his consular rights. Faulder became the 1st Canadian executed in nearly a half-century. Other foreign-born inmates to die in Texas include Carlos Santana, 40, from the Dominican Republic, executed in 1993 for the slaying of a Houston armored truck guard during a robbery in 1981. Miguel Flores, 31, from Mexico, was put to death in 2000 for the 1989 abduction and fatal stabbing of a 20-year-old woman in Borger in the Texas Panhandle. Javier Suarez Medina, 33, also from Mexico, received injection in 2002 for the death of a Dallas police officer shot during an undercover drug buy. (source: Associated Press) MISSOURI----new execution date Execution set for man who beat, stabbed grandmother In Jefferson City, the Missouri Supreme Court on Monday set an April 27 execution date for a man who killed his St. Louis grandmother in 1993 after she refused to give him money to buy crack cocaine. Donald Jones, 38, was convicted on June 16, 1994, of 1st-degree murder and armed criminal action in the beating and stabbing of Dorothy Knuckles, 68. A judge sentenced him to death on July 22, 1994. About midnight on March 6, 1993, Jones went to his grandmother's home seeking money to buy drugs, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon's office said Monday. When Knuckles tried to warn him about using drugs and alcohol, he hit her with a butcher block, then stabbed her to silence her screams, Nixon's office said. Jones took the grandmother's videocassette recorder, some money and her car keys. Prosecutors said he later sold the VCR and rented out the car to get drugs. Phone messages left with Jones' lawyers for comment were not immediately returned. (source: Associated Press) DELAWARE: Judge Says Capano Must be in Court When Execution Date is Set A Superior Court judge has denied Thomas Capano's request not to be present in the courtroom Thursday when his new execution date is set. The former state prosecutor and political insider was convicted for the 1996 murder of Anne Marie Fahey, the scheduling secretary for then-governor Tom Carper. Prosecutors said Capano killed Fahey when she tried to end an affair with him. Earlier this month, the judge denied Capano's motions for post-conviction relief. He rejected arguments that Capano had bad legal counsel at trial and that his death sentence should be set aside because of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings. (source: Associated Press) OHIO: Court declines appeal by one of Ohio's longest-serving death row inmates The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal from an Ohio prisoner who is one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the state for the 1982 killing of a postal worker. John Spirko claimed the state's case against him was weakened when death penalty charges against his co-defendant were dropped last year. Spirko, who has maintained that he's innocent of the murder, also says prosecutors withheld key evidence and presented a false case. An important element of the Van Wert County prosecutor's case was a witness who recognized co-defendant Delaney Gibson, a friend of Spirko, near the Elgin post office on Aug. 9, 1982, the day that postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger, 48, disappeared. Mottinger's body was found a month later in a soybean field 50 miles from the northwest Ohio town, wrapped in a paint-splattered curtain. She had been stabbed about 15 times in the chest and stomach. Her purse and approximately $750 in cash, postage stamps and money orders were missing from the Elgin post office, police said. Spirko contacted police in October 1982 and offered to trade information about her death in exchange for help on unrelated assault charges. Police said Spirko told them details of the killing that the public could not have known, but Spirko's lawyers said that information could have come from secondhand repetition rather than by participation. No physical evidence tied Spirko to the murder. He was convicted of the killing based largely on his statements to police and the testimony of the eyewitness who had seen Gibson near the post office. Prosecutors had alleged that Spirko participated in the kidnapping and killing of Mottinger along with Gibson. In an appeal, Spirko's lawyers argued that Gibson could not have kidnapped Mottinger because he was eight hours away in Asheville, N.C., the night before the woman disappeared. Gibson was charged in the Mottinger killing, but was convicted in an unrelated murder and served time in a prison in Kentucky from 1983 to 2001. Van Wert County Prosecutor Charles Kennedy said charges against Gibson were dropped because by the time he was released, the case against him was too old to try. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Spirko's conviction and death sentence. Spirko, who remains at the Mansfield Correctional Institution, was sentenced to die in 1984. About 5 Ohio inmates sentenced to death in 1983 also remain on death row, prison system spokeswoman Andrea Dean said. "Pending any other further appeals, we will move forward and ask the Ohio Supreme Court to set an execution date," said Kim Norris, a spokeswoman for Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro. Messages seeking comment were left Monday for Spirko's attorney, Thomas C. Hill. The case is Spirko v. Bradshaw, 04-972. ON THE NET----U.S. Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/ (source: Associated Press) USA: In 1969, the Senate ratified the Vienna Convention, which requires consular access for Americans detained abroad and foreigners arrested in the United States. Foreign killers have no rights in U.S. federal courts to challenge their murder convictions on the grounds they were improperly denied legal help from their consulates, the Supreme Court was told Monday in a case testing the effect of international law in death penalty cases. Justices heard arguments in the case of Jose Medellin, who says his rights under a U.S. treaty were violated when a Texas court tried and sentenced him to death in 1994 without giving him consular access. Several of the justices showed little interest in deciding for now the impact of that treaty on domestic cases, particularly after President Bush last month ordered new state court hearings for Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row. "Isn't it true that the Texas proceeding could make this moot?" asked Justice John Paul Stevens. Holding off on the case "could avoid the necessity of deciding a lot of difficult questions" and "useless" decision-making, he said. R. Ted Cruz, Texas' solicitor general, responded that justices should rule that Medellin has no rights in federal courts as opposed to state courts because he failed to raise his claims at trial. "There is no constitutional claim," he said. The case, which has attracted worldwide attention, is seen as a test of how much weight the Supreme Court will give in domestic death penalty cases to the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, in The Hague, which ruled last year that the 51 convictions violated the 1963 Vienna Convention. It comes amid a growing divide on the Supreme Court over the role of international opinion to support decisions interpreting the U.S. Constitution. Last month, justices ruled 5-4 to outlaw the death penalty for juvenile criminals, citing in part the weight of international views against the practice. In 1969, the Senate ratified the Vienna Convention, which requires consular access for Americans detained abroad and foreigners arrested in the United States. The Constitution states that U.S. treaties "shall be the supreme law of the land," but does not make clear who interprets them. The case also pits the authority of state courts against the Bush administration, which in a surprise move ordered states to comply with the ICJ ruling and hold new hearings. At the same time, the administration said it was withdrawing from a section of the treaty so that the ICJ could no longer hear U.S. disputes. Texas argues that Medellin is procedurally barred under the Constitution from federal relief because he didn't raise his claims at his state trial. As a result, it says, the state court judgment should stand regardless of the orders from Bush and the ICJ. "Whether the president has authority to issue such a broad determination is far from clear," Cruz wrote in a recent filing. Any assertion that the presidential order "is somehow sufficiently authoritative to pre-empt long-standing state criminal laws ... is utterly unprecedented," he said. The administration, arguing that it is a president's decision - and not the judicial branch's - to determine whether the United States should comply with international law, said it decided that new state hearings were appropriate. "Compliance serves to protect the interest of United States citizens abroad, promotes the effective conduct of foreign relations and underscores the United States' commitment in the international community in the rule of law," acting Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote. Last year, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Texas, ruling that federal relief for Medellin was barred because he failed at trial to file objections that Mexico was not told of his arrest. It cited a 1998 Supreme Court case that suggested treaties were subject to each country's procedural rules. Medellin was one of five gang members sentenced to death for raping and murdering Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, in Houston in 1993. Justices were told that Medellin's court-appointed lawyer was suspended from practicing law for ethics violations during the case, and he failed to call any witnesses during the guilt phase of the trial. Lawyers for Mexico say the country would have made sure Medellin had a competent lawyer had it known about the 1994 trial. Medellin is supported in his appeal by dozens of countries, legal groups and human rights organizations, as well as former American diplomats and the European Union. After Bush ordered new hearings for the Mexicans, Medellin's attorneys asked the Supreme Court this month to put case on hold so they could pursue relief in state court first. But justices did not act on that request, allowing arguments to proceed Monday. According to Amnesty International, the Mexicans on death row affected by the ICJ ruling are held in nine states, although some have been recently commuted to life sentences. The states are California (27); Texas (15); Illinois (3); and Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Arizona and Arkansas (1 each). In all, 118 foreigners from 32 countries are on death rows in the United States. The case is Medellin v. Dretke, 04-5928. A ruling is expected by late June. (source: CBS News)
