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Monday, September 29, 1997

Report: U.S. operates double standard when Mexicans are arrested for murder

HOUSTON (AP) -- The release of death-row inmate Ricardo Aldape Guerra and the execution of Irineo Tristan Montoya last summer exposed the cultural difference between Mexico and the United States on capital punishment.

Mexicans view the death penalty, abolished in 1929 in the predominantly Catholic nation, as barbaric. Most Americans embrace the death penalty as a deterrent to crime and the only fitting punishment for taking a life.

The conflict is much more than a human rights debate between the two countries, the Houston Chronicle reported in a copyright story Sunday.

It is a festering historical dispute in which Mexico sees the United States as a racist, ruthless nation that denies rights to Mexicans in this country while expecting fair treatment for Americans abroad.

"It goes right into the heart of every Mexican -- Yankee imperialism, the upper hand of Norte Americanos against Mexicanos," said Tony Zavaleta, social anthropologist at the University of Texas-Brownsville.

Of the 59 foreign citizens on death row in the United States, 34 -- including 11 in Texas -- are Mexican citizens.

The Mexican citizen sentenced to death row, particularly in Texas, becomes a "continuing symbol of the differences that exist and the grudges that exist between the two nations," Zavaleta said.

The Aldape Guerra and Tristan Montoya cases threw a particularly harsh light on the differences, which were exacerbated by Mexico's attempt to get U.S. authorities to recognize its right to defend its people.

The concerns center on alleged violations of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, an international treaty that became U.S. law in 1969.

Under Article 36, authorities must inform foreign nationals of their right to contact their consulates for help when arrested on criminal charges.

"I can assure you that the State Department would never accept another country not notifying them when an American is detained," said Miguel Angel Gonzalez Felix, legal adviser for the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Relations.

"We are requesting the State Department to give us exactly what we provide the U.S. in Mexico."

Robert Brooks, a Virginia attorney who represented Mario Murphy, a Mexican citizen executed Sept. 17, says the State Department allows the law to go unheeded.

"They have known about this problem for a long time," Brooks said. "While they are resolving this problem, people are going to death in violation of the very article that people are relying on when they go out of this country."

Mexico has issued formal protests with the State Department claiming U.S. authorities have violated the treaty. In every capital punishment case, Mexican consulates were not notified until after their citizens had been convicted and sentenced to death, the Chronicle reported.

The State Department counters by saying state authorities have been issued advisories informing them of Article 36.

When attorneys for Tristan Montoya filed Texas open records requests for Article 36 advisories from the State Department on file, the governor's office, state attorney general's office and Brownsville police all replied they found no record of the advisories.

"Even if you were not given a chance to contact your consulate, that does not override your conviction. That was the position we took and the courts agreed," said Ward Tisdale, spokesman for Texas Attorney General Dan Morales.

Last month, the Mexican consulate in Houston gave 30,000 cards to Mexican businesses and lawyers in Houston to distribute to customers and clients. The cards state in Spanish "Mexican: know your rights" and lists a 24-hour toll-free number to call for assistance.

Aldape Guerra was released April 15 after spending nearly 15 years on Texas death row for the murder of Houston police officer James Harris. He was released after an appellate court judge upheld a federal court ruling that cited police and prosecutorial misconduct in the murder investigation.

Prosecutors decided against retrying the case. The ruling wiped out the use of six witnesses who identified Aldape Guerra as the suspect who shot or pointed the gun at the officer.

Aldape Guerra received a hero's homecoming in Monterrey and was cheered by Mexican reporters when he refused to answer media questions in English. After less than six months of freedom, he died Aug. 21 in a car crash.

The case reinforced Mexican public opinion against the death penalty because it showed that someone conceivably could be executed for a crime he didn't commit.

Two months after Aldape Guerra's release, the state executed Tristan Montoya, who signed a murder confession written in English that he couldn't read. He came home to a martyr's funeral, hailed as a symbol of American injustice.