Foreign Nationals

John Bellinger, who served as legal adviser to the State Department from 2005 to 2009, has called on President Obama to assist in the review of the death penalty cases of foreign nationals who were denied rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.  The U.S. has ratified the Vienna Convention and the Protocol that provides for resolution of disputes in the International Court of Justice in the Hague (ICJ).  Mexico brought a suit to this court on behalf of its citizens on death row in various states because the U.S. had not provided the defendants with access to their consulates at the time of their arrest.  The ICJ held that the cases of the Mexican nationals should be reviewed before any executions went forward.  President George W. Bush ordered state courts  to review the cases, but this order was ultimately blocked in the U.S. Supreme Court.  Mr. Bellinger said that President Obama could comply with our obligations under the treaty through legislation: "The Obama administration's best option would be to seek narrowly tailored legislation that would authorize the president to order review of these cases and override, if necessary, any state criminal laws limiting further appeals, in order to comply with the United Nations Charter," he wrote recently in the N.Y. Times.

Notable international law experts cited in a recent article in the Washington Lawyer criticized the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision on whether an international treaty was binding on Texas in the case of death row inmate Jose Medellin.

An op-ed by Texas state Senator Rodney Ellis and law professor Craig Jackson argues that Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons should follow the International Court of Justice’s order to stay the executions of Mexican citizens in Texas. They believe the World Court’s decision was the “right thing to do” and Gov. Perry “would do well to consider how defiance of the World Court ruling will affect the safety of Americans abroad who rely on the same treaty protections that Texas violated in these cases.” The World Court held that the U.S.

Mexico has returned to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in seeking a stay of execution for Mexican-born inmates in the U.S.  Mexico requested the U.N.'s highest court, commonly referred to as the World Court, to intervene because the United States has failed to comply with an earlier ICJ judgment ordering a review of the trials of the Mexican citizens. The World Court ruled in 2004 that the U.S.

On March 25, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Medellin v. Texas (No. 06-984) that the President does not have the authority to order states to bypass their procedural rules and comply with a ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ).