Texas executes Mexican after appeals fail

[LazyLion]

The US state of Texas executed a Mexican national on Wednesday despite frantic late appeals based on possible trial irregularities and mental disability, authorities said.

Ramiro Hernandez, 44, was put to death by lethal injection at 6:28 pm (2328 GMT) in Huntsville, Texas.

He was sentenced to die in 2000 for murdering a 49-year-old man who employed him on his ranch in San Antonio. He also repeatedly raped his victim's wife following the murder.

"I have no pain and no guilt. All I have is love. Love will win. Thank you God, I am going with you," prison authorities reported Hernandez as saying just before receiving the lethal dose.

Last week, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from him as one of several Mexicans languishing in US prisons seeking to challenge their sentences on the grounds they were not properly advised of their right to consular assistance after their arrest.

The Vienna Convention, ratified by 175 countries including the United States, dictates that foreign nationals must be able to receive consular assistance when arrested.

Amnesty International appealed to Texas Governor Rick Perry saying that Hernandez was mentally disabled and therefore should not be executed.

In Mexico, Perseo Quiroz, Amnesty International's local branch chief, said: "There is nothing more absurd than an atrocity committed in the name of justice."

Quiroz said Hernandez's execution "was a murder, and a murder based on discrimination."

Last year, Texas accounted for more than a third of all US executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

US states using the death penalty have faced crises over shortages of lethal injection drugs after European firms stopped supplying pentobarbital.

The shortage has prompted many US states to turn to unregulated compounding pharmacies to supply the drugs instead.

Lawyers for many prisoners have said the compounded drugs can cause excruciating pain, putting executions using them in violation of the US Constitution, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment.

Texas authorities say the substances used in its executions have been tested and found to be free of contaminants.


Source : Sapa-AFP /mm
Date : 10 Apr 2014 03:10

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Why is the descriptor Mexican used instead of something that's actually relevant to his case?

 

[LazyLion]

Why is the descriptor Mexican used instead of something that's actually relevant to his case?

The media uses descriptors all the time to distinguish people.
So do people in everyday conversation.

 

[Rahl]

So were arguing that he could have been told by his own consulate that he was guilty and he should pay for his crimes as opposed to a US jury saying it to him?

I could understand evidence coming to light that proved his innocence but this just boggles the mind. :wtf:

 

[Vrotappel]

Texas executes murderer and rapist after appeals fail

More apt.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

The media uses descriptors all the time to distinguish people.
So do people in everyday conversation.

Yeah, but I'd think the crime he was found guilty of would be more important in the context of the article.

 

[Greylor]

Texas executes murderer and rapist after appeals fail

More apt.

Beat me to it.

If it was just a murder I could see where they are coming from....but he followed it up with a rape. Zero sympathy from here.

 

[AstroTurf]

Beat me to it.

If it was just a murder I could see where they are coming from....but he followed it up with a rape. Zero sympathy from here.

The appeals details are all about him being Mexican...

 

[Greylor]

The appeals details are all about him being Mexican...

The legal appeal to get him off is around him being Mexican and a technicality.

The appeal to the governor to stop the execution was because he is "mentally disabled."

I just re-read the article and he actually repeatedly raped her...not just once. Not going to lose sleep over this one.

 

[seanyp00h]

Texas authorities say the substances used in its executions have been tested and found to be free of contaminants.

On who? The Mexican?

 

[AstroTurf]

The legal appeal to get him off is around him being Mexican and a technicality.

The appeal to the governor to stop the execution was because he is "mentally disabled."

I just re-read the article and he actually repeatedly raped her...not just once. Not going to lose sleep over this one.

Neither will I.

Anyway I think the headline was apt as is due to the "legal appeal" and even if it does get some Texans raving at the mouth xenophobic I believe that sanity will prevail, they are Americans, there are not going to be mass riots and murders as would happen in our own back yard.

 

[LazyLion]

UN RIPS US OVER DEATH ROW MEXICANS

The United Nations ripped the United States on Friday for denying Mexican death row inmates access to their homeland's diplomats.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, condemned Wednesday's execution of Mexican citizen Ramiro Hernandez Llanas calling it "just the latest in similar cases involving Mexican nationals."

Under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, foreigners who are put on trial must be allowed to receive advice from diplomats, who in turn must be alerted to cases involving one of their nationals.

But the US state of Texas refuses Mexican inmates this right, which has drawn international opprobrium from the UN and rights activists.

Hernandez, 44, was executed for the 1997 killing of a former US university professor. He reportedly had escaped from a Mexican prison, where he was serving a sentence for murder.

But however serious the crime, and however long an individual has been resident in the country where they fall foul of the law, the diplomatic convention applies, according to the UN.

"The United States is breaching the convention, because of what happens in Texas," Colville said.

Washington repeatedly has argued that international law does not apply to the justice systems of the 50 individual US states, but Colville said that was invalid.

"You can't just say, 'Well that's the business of the state of Texas'. It does engage the country's responsibility under the convention," he said.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that the US must review the cases of 51 Mexicans on death row -- including Hernandez -- because they had not received consular services.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has written directly to Texas Governor Rick Perry to press the issue in the past, but received a "very angry response", Colville said.

UN criticism has no formal impact, he acknowledged, but it does carry moral weight.

"There's no policeman knocking at the door when you breach a convention, but it doesn't do the reputation of a country any good at all," he said.


Source : Sapa-AFP /kd
Date : 11 Apr 2014 15:23