http://www.themonitor.com/news/court_12 ... death.html
Mexico seeks stay of Texas executions
Jeremy Roebuck
June 6, 2008 - 8:42PM
Mexico appealed to the United Nation's primary court this week to block the executions of five of its citizens on Texas' death row.

The nation asked the International Court of Justice to clarify a previous ruling ordering the United States to grant the men new hear-ings after it was found they were denied access to diplomatic officials shortly after their arrests.

Mexico's request comes two months after a U.S. Supreme Court opinion clearing Texas of any obligation to obey the international body.

It also places the five inmates at the center of a political fight involving international treaties and worldwide perceptions of the death penalty, said Larry Warner, a Brownsville-based appeals attorney representing one of the men.

"The facts of these cases don't change," he said. "But what might change are the attitudes in this country towards treaties and the death penalty."

Of the five, two were convicted of crimes committed in Hidalgo County. They are:

>> Roberto Moreno Ramos, now 53, who confessed to clubbing his wife and two children over the head with a hammer in 1992, before burying them under the floor of their Progreso home.

>> Rubén Ramírez Cárdenas, now 37, who murdered an Edinburg teenager in 1997 after sneaking into her home, tying her up, kid-napping her and raping her.

Both have exhausted their regular state and federal appeals processes, but no dates have been set for their executions, said Ted Hake, head of the Hidalgo County district attorney's appellate division.



ONGOING DISPUTE

Mexico openly opposes the death penalty and has fought to have their sentences changed for years.

In 2003, Moreno and Ramírez - along with 49 other Mexican nationals sentenced to death - were named in a petition filed with the international court seeking new hearings on the grounds that they were denied rights guaranteed to them under the 1963 Vienna Convention.

The treaty requires law enforcement to advise all arrested foreign nationals that their consulate can be contacted to help with legal proceedings.

In past cases, consular officials have helped provide mitigating evidence gathered in Mexico on its citizens' behalves, said Miriam Medel, a spokeswoman for the Mexican Consulate in McAllen.

"We work with local police departments pretty often," she said. "Now, even when (the suspects) say they don't want us to be noti-fied, the police usually do it anyway."

The 2003 petition became the basis for the international court's original ruling and a U.S. presidential directive that same year order-ing states to grant the 51 men new hearings.

But the U.S. Supreme Court found in March that President Bush overstepped his boundaries and effectively gave Texas a green light to proceed with executions.

The Constitution "allows the president to execute the laws, not make them," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opin-ion.



LOSING GAMBLE?

Critics saw Mexico's return to the international court on Thursday as a last-ditch effort to save the five men - and one that is unlikely to delay the process. Although its rulings are binding, member nations often ignore them.

A spokeswoman for the U.N. court said justices have opened a new case on the matter and may issue an injunction barring Texas from proceeding.

One of the condemned men - José Ernesto Medellín, who was convicted of the rape and murder of two teenage girls near Houston - is set to die Aug. 5.

Warner, the Brownsville-based appeals attorney, hopes the delay at least will buy enough time to save the life of his client Moreno.

"Who would have ever believed 10 years ago, when this case started, that the Supreme Court would ban execution of the mentally retarded or people under 18?" he said.

"The politics of the United States and the politics of the death penalty are changing."