On March 31, 2004, the International Court of Justice will issue a rul­ing in a case brought by Mexico against the United States involv­ing 52 Mexicans on death row in var­i­ous U.S. states. The Court is the high­est legal organ of the United Nations and is based in The Hague. Mexico has argued that the defen­dants are enti­tled to retri­als because they were not informed of their right to talk to con­sular offi­cials after being arrest­ed, as pro­vid­ed by the Vienna Convention on Consular Rights. Last year, the Court ordered the U.S. to stay the exe­cu­tions of three Mexicans deemed in immi­nent dan­ger, and it reserved the right to inter­vene in dozens of oth­er cas­es. Oklahoma recent­ly defied this order and set a May 18 exe­cu­tion date for Osvaldo Torres, a Mexican for­eign nation­al. (Reuters, March 22, 2004) See Foreign Nationals and International Death Penalty.

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