A hear­ing to set an exe­cu­tion date for Texas death row inmate Humberto Leal was post­poned after the pre­sid­ing judge received a let­ter from a high-rank­ing U.S. State Department offi­cial. Leal, a Mexican cit­i­zen who was sen­tenced to death in 1995, had already been trans­ferred to Bexar County Jail for the hear­ing to set the exe­cu­tion date. Harold Hongju Koh, a top legal advis­er to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrote the judge request­ing an indef­i­nite post­pone­ment while Congress is work­ing on leg­is­la­tion that could affect Leal’s case. Leal is one of 51 Mexican cit­i­zens includ­ed in a 2004 rul­ing by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) (Avena and Other Mexican Nationals) that Mexican for­eign nation­als on U.S. death rows were not giv­en prop­er noti­fi­ca­tion of their rights to con­tact their for­eign con­sulate. Koh said that the case is impor­tant in U.S. for­eign rela­tions, and wrote that, ​“The Executive Branch is engag­ing in con­sul­ta­tions with Congress and with the Government of Mexico to deter­mine how best to ensure the United States com­plies with its oblig­a­tions under Avena.”

Following the rul­ing of the ICJ in 2004, then-President George W. Bush ordered the Texas courts to hold hear­ings to review the cas­es of the Mexican nation­als cit­ed in the rul­ing. Texas refused, and the U.S. Supreme Court held that Congress would have to pass leg­is­la­tion enforc­ing the rel­e­vant pro­to­col to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations in order for Texas to be bound by the ICJ ruling.

(C. Kapitan, ​“Execution date for teen’s killer in lim­bo,” San Antonio Express-News, July 16, 2010). See Foreign Nationals and the Death Penalty.

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