During 25 years on Texas’ death row, Cesar Fierro’s men­tal health has dete­ri­o­rat­ed to the extent that his attor­ney hard­ly rec­og­nizes him. Since being sen­tenced to death in 1980, his moth­er has died, his broth­er has died, his wife divorced him and his daugh­ter stopped vis­it­ing him. Gradually, he refused to even speak with his lawyers.

​“He would­n’t come out of his cell for months at a time unless he was forcibly extract­ed,” says David Dow, a con­sti­tu­tion­al law pro­fes­sor at the University of Houston Law Center and direc­tor of its Texas Innocence Network. ​“He refused to show­er and there were feces on his cell wall. It was very dis­turb­ing .…”

Dow said that when Fierro was sent to death row in 1980, he was a soft-spo­ken, slight­ly over­weight man in his mid-20s who was high­ly respect­ful of his lawyers and the process, which he felt would set him free.

​“When I saw him last year, he had long, stringy hair and a strong wind could have blown him over,” says Dow. Even when told of some good news from the courts, Fierro raged and ram­bled inco­her­ent­ly, bang­ing the phone against the glass par­ti­tion of the vis­it­ing room.

Fierro’s case is one among about 50 sim­i­lar cas­es in which the International Court of Justice recent­ly ruled that the con­vic­tions and death sen­tences of Mexican nation­als should be giv­en fur­ther review in U.S. courts. President Bush has ordered the courts in Texas and else­where to com­ply with the World Court’s rul­ing, but Texas author­i­ties have said Bush lacks the prop­er author­i­ty. The issue of the effect of the World Court’s rul­ing is cur­rent­ly before the U.S. Supreme Court. 

(Texas Lawyer, May 2, 2005). See Foreign Nationals; also DPIC’s descrip­tion of Medellin v. Dretke (in U.S. Supreme Court); Mental Illness and Time on Death Row.

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