Foreign Nationals Under Sentence of Death in the U.S.

This infor­ma­tion has been pro­vid­ed by Mark Warren of Human Rights Research.

TOTAL: 106 (as of April 29, 2024)
 

TOTAL NATIONALITIES REPRESENTED: 33

Foreign Nationals Under Sentence of Death in the U.S. By Foreign Nationality

Active Death Sentences (101)

Awaiting Retrial or Resentencing (5)

(Includes defen­dants await­ing a retri­al or resen­tenc­ing fol­low­ing a court rever­sal, or whose court-ordered rever­sal is not yet final)

Foreign Nationals Under Sentence of Death in the U.S. by State of Confinement

TOTALS BY JURISDICTION: All State Jurisdictions (103); All Federal Jurisdictions (3) — California (57), Florida (13), Texas (14), Pennsylvania (5), Nevada (4), Arizona (2), Ohio (2), Georgia (1), Alabama (1), Louisiana (1), Montana (1), Mississippi (1), Nebraska (1).

Totals include all report­ed for­eign nation­als under sen­tence of death, includ­ing those await­ing new sen­tenc­ing hear­ings and cas­es in which the indi­vid­u­al’s nation­al­i­ty is dis­put­ed. Confirmed cas­es of dual cit­i­zen­ship (indi­vid­u­als pos­sess­ing both U.S. cit­i­zen­ship and that of anoth­er coun­try) are not listed.

List of Symbols in Table Below

• ✓ for­eign nation­al­i­ty independently confirmed
• ♀ Female
• ⬅ fac­ing pos­si­ble exe­cu­tion in the near future
• ☀ await­ing re-sen­tenc­ing or new tri­al after appel­late court ruling
• ⚠ cas­es in which a vio­la­tion of con­sular rights has been raised in court pro­ceed­ings or oth­er­wise directly reported.
• ✉ cas­es in which noti­fi­ca­tion of con­sular rights was report­ed­ly pro­vid­ed by author­i­ties with­out delay (i.e. upon arrest, or pri­or to book­ing for detention).
• † cas­es in which a con­sular rights vio­la­tion is disputed
• I claim of inno­cence raised on appeal (incom­plete data)
• M cas­es of report­ed men­tal ill­ness, intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty or brain dam­age (incom­plete data)
• D inmate with INS deten­tion num­ber, but for whom no nation­al­i­ty has been specified
• ? cas­es of pos­si­ble dual nationality

Notes

Solely for the pur­pos­es of this list, a ​“for­eign nation­al” is any indi­vid­ual under sen­tence of death in the USA who does not pos­sess U.S. cit­i­zen­ship. More gen­er­al­ly, for­eign nation­als in the United States would include: tourists and vis­i­tors, migrant work­ers with tem­po­rary per­mits, res­i­dent aliens, undoc­u­ment­ed aliens, asy­lum-seek­ers, and per­sons in tran­sit. Foreign cit­i­zens com­prise a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion: more than 60 mil­lion for­eign­ers vis­it the United States annu­al­ly from over­seas and approx­i­mate­ly 22 mil­lion U.S res­i­dents are non-cit­i­zens (accord­ing to the 2012 data from the U.S. Census Bureau).

Along with the gen­er­al con­sular noti­fi­ca­tion oblig­a­tions that apply under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the USA has also nego­ti­at­ed sep­a­rate bilat­er­al con­sular agree­ments applic­a­ble to some 50 coun­tries. Under the terms of most of these agree­ments, there is a manda­to­ry oblig­a­tion to prompt­ly noti­fy the con­sulate of an arrest irre­spec­tive of the nation­al’s wish­es (typ­i­cal­ly with­in a spec­i­fied time peri­od, such as 72 hours fol­low­ing the detention).

Dual Nationality

Individuals retain­ing dual nation­al­i­ty who are arrest­ed in one of their coun­tries of cit­i­zen­ship are prob­lem­at­ic for the pur­pos­es of con­sular noti­fi­ca­tion under the VCCR (which makes no ref­er­ence to dual cit­i­zen­ship). Individuals are list­ed pro­vi­sion­al­ly if a report is received that they pos­sess cit­i­zen­ship in a coun­try oth­er than the USA; if U.S. cit­i­zen­ship is lat­er con­firmed, the name is removed from this list.

The U.S. Department of State has tak­en the posi­tion that indi­vid­u­als who retain U.S. cit­i­zen­ship along with anoth­er nation­al­i­ty are not enti­tled to noti­fi­ca­tion of con­sular rights if arrest­ed in the USA. At a min­i­mum, how­ev­er, for­eign con­sulates in the United States retain the right to com­mu­ni­cate with and vis­it their cit­i­zens in cus­tody, irre­spec­tive of dual nation­al­i­ty. Many coun­tries have assert­ed a right to pro­vide con­sular pro­tec­tion to dual nation­als arrest­ed in their oth­er coun­try of cit­i­zen­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly in life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tions and denial of con­sular noti­fi­ca­tion to dual nation­als may deny the accused access to con­sular assis­tance in inves­ti­gat­ing and prepar­ing his or her guilt or penal­ty defens­es. While the scope of con­sular rights for this cat­e­go­ry of dual nation­als may be open to some inter­pre­ta­tion, all non‑U.S. cit­i­zens detained or arrest­ed in the USA are unques­tion­ably enti­tled to the full range of con­sular rights afford­ed under international law.

Sources of Information

Since U.S. author­i­ties do not always accu­rate­ly list or report incar­cer­at­ed indi­vid­u­als by nation­al­i­ty, it is dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy and ver­i­fy all for­eign nation­als under sen­tence of death. For instance, a recent U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics sur­vey not­ed that a report­ed 95,977 nonci­t­i­zens were held in cus­tody at midyear 2010, but also indi­cat­ed that the cri­te­ria used to deter­mine for­eign nation­al­i­ty var­ied wide­ly by state. There is no acces­si­ble nation­al reg­istry of death-sen­tenced for­eign­ers (although the USCIS data base of deportable aliens serv­ing prison terms would like­ly include all known for­eign nation­als on death row nation­wide). Compounding the prob­lem is the still-wide­spread fail­ure of U.S. law enforce­ment offi­cials to noti­fy detained for­eign­ers of their con­sular rights. Without this noti­fi­ca­tion and sub­se­quent com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the request of the detained nation­al, for­eign con­sulates in the United States are like­ly to remain unaware of the true num­ber of their nation­als who are impris­oned, let alone sen­tenced to death.

The infor­ma­tion for this list comes from a vari­ety of sources, includ­ing appel­late attor­neys, post-con­vic­tion resource cen­ters, tri­al coun­sel, pros­e­cu­tors, news­pa­per arti­cles, jour­nal­ists, con­sulates, and prison officials.

Research to date indi­cates that there are no for­eign nation­als cur­rent­ly on death row in South Carolina. There is as yet no com­plete data from a num­ber of U.S. states with sig­nif­i­cant death row pop­u­la­tions, includ­ing Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. A com­pre­hen­sive list would like­ly include some 145 names (i.e., rough­ly 5% of the total U.S. death row population).

A name is includ­ed on the list if it is con­firmed by at least one reli­able con­tact. The even­tu­al goal is to ver­i­fy the nation­al­i­ties of all indi­vid­u­als on this list from two or more inde­pen­dent sources. At present, approx­i­mate­ly three-quar­ters of the names have been cor­rob­o­rat­ed by mul­ti­ple independent sources.

I wel­come any and all addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion on this subject.

Mark Warren, Human Rights Research
e‑mail
tel: (613) 256‑8308

Human Rights Research pro­vides infor­ma­tion on con­sular rights issues in death penal­ty cas­es, along with inter­na­tion­al legal con­sult­ing and research ser­vices to attor­neys, con­sulates and non-governmental organizations.