Supreme Court backs Texas in dispute over executing Mexican nationals

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling Tuesday could move three Mexican nationals sentenced to death in Hidalgo County one step closer to execution.

In a 6-3 decision that has rankled officials south of the border, the justices decided Texas can disregard a presidential order and an international court that found police violated the rights of several Mexican citizens on death row by preventing them from contacting diplomatic officials immediately after their arrest.

The ruling is likely to have wide-ranging repercussions on issues of presidential power, international diplomacy and the death penalty.

But for Roberto Moreno Ramos, a man convicted in the 1992 killing of his wife and two children in Progreso, the decision means only one thing.

"(He's) running out of options," Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra said. "(He's) getting closer to execution."

THE MEDELLIN CASE

The case before the Supreme Court involved a former Houston gang member who was sentenced to death in Harris County in 1994 for the murders of two teenage girls.

Jose Ernesto Medellin, now 33, was arrested a few days after the killings.

Authorities read him a standard Miranda warning, which advises a suspect of his rights to remain silent and have an attorney present during interviews with police, before confessing to the crimes.

But authorities did not advise him of his right to request assistance from the Mexican Consulate, provided under the 1963 Vienna Convention.

The treaty ensures suspects arrested in a foreign country can speak with representatives from their own country to aid in their defense.

In past cases, consular officials have explained the differences between the Mexican and U.S. justice systems and provided mitigating evidence gathered in Mexico on a defendant's background, said Juan Manuel Gomez-Robledo, then-counsel for the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a 2003 brief.

When Medellin's appeals attorneys attempted to argue that this oversight violated international law, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals shut them down because he never raised the issue in his original trial.

In briefs filed before the Supreme Court, the state argued that a Mexican diplomat's involvement would not have changed the case's outcome.

OVERSTEPPED AUTHORITY

But Medellin's experience was not an isolated one.

In 2003, Mexico found that at least 51 of its citizens had been sentenced to death in the United States under similar circumstances and sued the country in the International Court of Justice, the primary judicial body of the United Nations.

At least three of the Mexican nationals cited in those legal filings were sentenced in Hidalgo County.

They include:

 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.

 Hector Garcia, now 46, who was convicted of fatally shooting a 14-year-old boy during a convenience store robbery north of Edinburg in 1989.

 Ruben Cardenas, 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.

"In this consulate we do deal with police and Mexican nationals quite often," said Miriam Medel, spokeswoman for the Mexican Consulate in McAllen. "But in those three cases we were not notified of the arrests."

The International Court sided with Mexico and found that the United States had violated the Vienna Convention.

Furthermore, the court ruled, the Mexican death row inmates - many of whom had exhausted their appeals - should be granted new hearings on their cases.

While President Bush disagreed with the court's decision, he said it must be carried out by state courts, because the United States had agreed to the treaty.

He moved to ensure Texas would reopen the cases against Medellin, Ramos, Garcia, Cardenas and several other Mexican nationals based solely on his presidential order.

But Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling found the president overstepped his authority and that the 1963 treaty does not, on its own, overrule state laws.

The Constitution "allows the president to execute the laws, not make them," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a majority, which included Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

REACTION

For Ramos, the decision could mean one less avenue to appeal his death sentence.

Despite the Supreme Court's ruling, Texas could decide to grant him another hearing based on the consular issues; however, that possibility is not likely.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott disagreed with the Bush administration's order in 2005.

The Hidalgo County District Attorney's Office said it will likely wait until the resolution of another Supreme Court case before setting an execution date for Ramos and Cardenas, both of whom have exhausted the normal slate of death penalty appeals.

Uncertainty over the other case, which questions whether the three-chemical cocktail currently used to execute death row inmates could be considered cruel and unusual punishment, has effectively put executions on hold across the country.

And even though Ramos' attorney - Brownsville-based lawyer Larry Warner, who helped Mexico present its case to the International Court - remained optimistic Tuesday, it appears an execution date could be imminent.

"Absolutely and without question, the U.S. admitted that nobody asked Roberto Moreno Ramos whether he would like to have his consulate contacted," Warner said. "If you're going to put people to death, you have to follow the rules."

The Mexican Foreign Affairs ministry mirrored Warner's disappointment with the court's decision, which may further damage relations between the two countries - already strained by failed efforts to reform U.S. immigration policy, U.S. plans to build a border fence and backlash against the North American Free Trade Agreement, to which both countries are signatories.

Mexico employs no death penalty and, under a 1978 treaty, will not extradite U.S. fugitives who face possible execution.

In 2002, the Texas execution of a Mexican drug smuggler so upset then-President Vicente Fox that he canceled a scheduled trip to the United States.

Still, 44 Mexican nationals remain on death row in the United States, including 14 in Texas.

"The government of Mexico considers that the judgment of the International Court of Justice must be respected by states that have accepted its jurisdiction," the Mexican Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a terse statement in Spanish shortly after the Supreme Court's decision.

But for Ramos, who has spent the past 14 years wondering if and when he will be set to die, the complicated case simply boils down to one issue, Warner said.

"If you're going to be a law-abiding country, you've got to follow the rules," he said. "That didn't happen for Roberto Moreno Ramos."
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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.