"Mexican Man On Death Row In Texas Reunites With Family Days Before Planned Execution," is by Bill Vourvoulias for Fox News Latino.
Edgar Tamayo Arias, 46, a Mexican national scheduled to be executed in Texas by lethal injection on Jan. 22, apparently won't be alone when his final day comes.
Members of the death row inmate's family — some of whom he hasn't seen in 19 years — arrived in Houston on Sunday. According to Mexican press reports, relatives are scheduled to meet with Tamayo on Monday afternoon.
Tamayo is a native of Miacatlán, in the Mexican state of Morelos, who was convicted of the January 1994 murder of Houston police office Guy P. Gaddis.
He was put on death row, but his sentence was only the beginning of an extremely complicated legal case.
Tamayo’s case was one of 51 in the U.S. — 14 of them in Texas — that the International Court of Justice, the United Nation’s top judicial body, asked the United States to review the judgment in 2004 as part of an examination of possible violations of the Vienna Convention.
Tamayo claims he was never informed that he had the right to contact the Mexican consulate.
Since then, various Mexican officials, including the country’s foreign minister, the governor of Morelos and the country’s ambassador to the United States have intervened on his behalf, trying to get Texas to stay his execution and co-operate with the International Court.
Both the Bush and Obama administrations have pushed for the states to do so as well, but, in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that without a federal law directing states to act on requests from the International Court, they were not compelled to comply.
Last month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wrote a letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry and state Attorney General Greg Abbott, saying that the execution could have serious diplomatic repercussions.
Today's Houston Chronicle publishes the OpEd, "Define case by the Golden Rule," by Gabriel Salguero. He's president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition.
For the thousands of our fellow-citizens who serve as missionaries, clergy or aid workers in foreign lands, few safeguards are more important than their right to rapid consular contact if they are detained by the local authorities.
The simple act of sharing their religious beliefs can place them at risk of detention by repressive governments. Confronted by an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile legal system, prompt access to the assistance that only U.S. consulates can provide is their one secure lifeline to the outside world - and to eventual freedom.
Our consulates demand the humane treatment of jailed Americans; they notify their families back home, provide legal information to detainees and monitor the proceedings against them to ensure fair outcomes. These essential rights of consular assistance and access are enshrined in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty binding on the United States and 175 other countries worldwide.
Hardly a week goes by without a story in the news about another American wrongfully detained abroad. Most of those cases are speedily resolved, but the ongoing ability of our government to intervene effectively depends heavily on the extent to which we honor the Vienna Convention rights of foreigners here at home.
This delicate equilibrium of mutual treaty compliance is now threatened by a looming execution in Texas. Mexican national Edgar Tamayo was sentenced to death for the 1994 killing of Houston police officer Guy P. Gaddis, following an undeniable violation of the Vienna Convention that prevented his consulate from assisting in his trial defense.
Well after the trial, consular support led to previously undiscovered evidence of Tamayo's mental retardation and brain damage, mitigating factors that could have persuaded the jury to sentence him instead to life imprisonment. No court has reviewed that new evidence and, unless Texas authorities act on their former promise to support meaningful review of his Vienna Convention claim, Tamayo will be executed without any determination of how the treaty violation might have undermined his right to a fair trial.
Earlier coverage of Edgar Tamayo Arias' case begins at the link.
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