Court orders feds to halt Mexicans' executions in Texas

An international court on Wednesday ordered the U.S. federal government to take "all measures necessary" to halt the executions of five Mexican nationals on death row in Texas.

But the temporary injunction - meant to delay their deaths until court-mandated reviews of their cases can take place - is expected to have little effect on their ultimate fate, state officials said.

"This court ruling does not change anything," said Allison Castle, a spokeswoman in Gov. Rick Perry's office. "Those who come to Texas and commit crimes will have to pay the consequences."

The men -- including two sentenced to die for crimes committed in Hidalgo County -- have found themselves at the center of a five-year dispute between Mexico and its northern neighbor.

In 2003, the International Court of Justice -- the primary judicial organ of the United Nations -- ruled that local authorities in the United States had violated rights afforded to the men under the 1963 Vienna Convention.

By failing to notify the Mexican nationals that they could contact their consulates after their arrests, Texas may have compromised their defense, the panel ruled. The court ordered the United States to grant them new hearings.

But Mexico returned to The Hague last month, seeking a clarification of the world court's 2003 ruling and arguing the United States had not complied with the court's original order.

"(Mexico) hopes for proper enforcement of the injunction because of its legally binding nature," the country's Foreign Affairs Minister Patricia Espinosa Cantellano said in a statement written in Spanish.

In the world court's decision Wednesday, justices voted 7-5 to review their original decision and grant the injunction, putting the executions on hold until that review was completed.

The order, however, is unlikely to have much sway in Texas.

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that individual states were not obligated to follow the world court's orders since the treaty responsible for creating the court had never been ratified by the U.S. Congress.

And despite efforts by the Bush administration to intervene on behalf of the Mexican nationals, Texas courts have refused to consider their requests for new hearings.

Of the five men cited in Wednesday's ruling, all have exhausted their appeals under state and federal law and could be set for execution any time.

A Harris County state district court has already set an execution date for one of the men: José Ernesto Medellín, a 33-year-old Houston gang member convicted in 1994 for the murders of two teenage girls.

The Hidalgo County convicts are:

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

>> Rubén Ramírez Cárdenas, now 37, who sneaked into an Edinburg teenager's home in 1997 and bound, kidnapped and raped her before dumping her body in a nearby canal.

The world court is expected to release its review of the original order in the coming months.

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.