When he ran for president in 2000 George W. Bush had executed more US citizens than any other governor in history. This no doubt endeared him to many evangelical "Christian" voters. But Bush's executiion record pales beside that of his successor in the Texas State House, Rick Perry. Perry has executed more than 200 prisoners, including at least one who was an innocent man. This has made him enormously popular and has fueled speculation concerning Governor Perry's presidential ambitions. But Perry now has taken a step that will surely make him the Republican front-runner, should he decide to get into the race: he has executed a Mexican citizen while thumbing his nose at the Obama administration and International Law:
The top United Nations human rights official said Friday that the execution of a Mexican national in Texas was a breach of international law, while diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, expressed disappointment in the outcome of the case.
Humberto Leal Garcia Jr., who had been convicted of raping and killing a 16-year-old San Antonio girl in 1994, was executed by lethal injection on Thursday night, shortly after the Supreme Court denied the Obama administration’s request for a delay.
The administration had filed an amicus brief in the case because of concerns that Texas authorities, in failing to notify Leal of his right to access Mexican consular officials, had violated the United Nations’ Vienna Convention.
Watching executions in the US of foreign nationals who have been denied access to consular officials is nothing new to observers in Germany:
Bereits 1999 war die deutsche Bundesregierung im Falle der zum Tode verurteilten und dann hingerichteten deutschen Brüder Walter und Karl-Heinz LaGrand vor den Internationalen Gerichtshof gezogen. Auch ihnen war konsularische Betreuung vorenthalten worden, auch damals hatte die US-Justiz internationale Proteste und die einstweilige Anordnung des Internationalen Gerichtshofs ignoriert.
(Back already in 1999 the German government appealed to the Inernational Court of Justice in the case of the German brothers Walter and Karl-Heinz LaGrand who were sentenced to death and executed. They had alsoe been denied consular assistance and the U.S. Department of Justice had ignored international protests and the interim order of the International Court of Justice.)
The LeGrand bothers were charged with killing a man during a 1982 bungled bank robbery in Arizona.
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