Texas execution breaks international law

Humberto Leal Garcia was executed July 7 in Huntsville, Texas, despite a firestorm of worldwide opposition and outrage. His execution is symptomatic of the deep and ongoing crisis of U.S. capitalism, characterized by criminality abroad and racism, brutality and economic terror at home.

Humberto Leal Garcia

In violation of international law and defying a ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling gave the OK for this legal lynching.

At the eye of this storm is U.S. noncompliance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which the U.S. Senate ratified back in 1969. It requires nations to notify consular officials if a foreign national “is arrested or committed to prison or to custody pending trial or is detained in any other manner.”

Leal is a Mexican citizen. Officials in the Texas criminal justice system never informed him of his right to contact Mexican consular officials, nor did they inform those officials that a Mexican national was in their custody on a murder charge. Thus they deprived Leal of any “meaningful opportunity to show that he was not guilty of capital murder,” said his attorney, Sandra L. Babcock.

This deliberate violation of international law is such an embarrassment to the U.S. in its dealings with other countries that Leal’s case was at the center of uncommon appeals from President Barak Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. A request for a reprieve by the Mexican ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, was also dismissed. Editorials from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times called on Texas to stay the execution. So did Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who said it would have “serious repercussions” for U.S. relations with Mexico and the European Union.

Just as in the U.S. government’s bombing of Libya, which violates the War Powers Act, the state of Texas also follows the law only when convenient. “Texas is not bound by a foreign court’s ruling,” said Katherine Cesinger, press secretary for Gov. Perry, dismissively referring to the Vienna Convention after the execution.

When Texas executed Jose Medellin, another Mexican citizen, in August 2008, Perry’s response to appeals was that “Texas didn’t sign the Vienna Convention.”

Demand justice for the oppressed

Death penalty abolitionist Delia Perez-Meyer, whose brother is on death row in Livingston, Texas, was in the visiting room the morning of Leal’s execution while his family, the Mexican consul and his attorneys had their last visit. She was with them during the execution.

Perez-Meyer told Workers World: “Words cannot describe the sorrow and pain that the families of the victim and the family of Leal went through over this execution. It was truly one of the most difficult and saddest days of my life. They were brave, strong and hopeful until the last minute. Leal’s sister went in to witness the execution despite having fallen to the ground and vomiting when attorney Sandra Babcock told us the U.S. Supreme Court had denied the stay.”

As Leal lay on the gurney in the death chamber, he apologized to his family and the victim’s family. “I have hurt a lot of people. ... I take full blame for everything. I am sorry for what I did.

“One more thing,” he shouted, as the lethal drugs began taking effect, “Viva Mexico! Viva Mexico!” Leal will be buried in his hometown.

After the execution, relatives of Leal, who had gathered in Guadalupe, Mexico, burned a T-shirt with an image of the American flag. Leal’s uncle, Alberto Leal, criticized both the U.S. justice system and the Mexican government.

Demonstrations against the execution took place in more than a dozen Texas cities.

Gov. Perry, who may run for U.S. president in 2012, is calling for his “fellow Americans” to join him in a stadium in Houston on Aug. 6 for “a day of prayer and fasting on behalf of our nation.”

His prayers are not for an end to executions, home foreclosures, joblessness or homelessness. Nor are they for health care, even though Texas now ranks number one in the number of people without health insurance.

“People are adrift in a sea of moral relativism,” says the governor.

The gay community, immigrant rights activists, anti-war activists, supporters of Palestine as well as death penalty abolitionists will be outside to demand Perry pray for justice for the oppressed.

Texas has executed 470 of the 1,260 killed since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976. Throughout the U.S., executions are actually down, death sentences are down, and support for the death penalty has gone down. Many people on juries are aware that innocent people have been executed and fear having to face the prospect of sending someone to his or her death.