U.N. Human Rights Officials Say Planned Texas Execution Violates International Treaties

United Nations human rights officials have urged the government of the United States to halt the imminent execution of a Mexican national who was tried and sentenced to death in Texas in violation of U.S. treaty obligations. Texas is scheduled to execute Roberto Moreno Ramos (pictured) on November 14, in an action an international human rights court has said would violate the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Agnes Callamard, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, and Seong-Phil Hong, the Chair-Rapporteur of the Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, cautioned that “[a]ny death sentence carried out in contravention of a Government’s international obligations amounts to an arbitrary execution.” The human rights experts called for Ramos’s death sentence “to be annulled and for [him] to be re-tried in compliance with due process and international fair trial standards.”

The International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that the United States had breached its treaty obligations under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by allowing states to impose death sentences on fifty-two foreign nationals—including Ramos—without permitting them to notify their governments and obtain consular assistance in preparation for trial. Under the Vienna Convention, individuals arrested outside their home country must be notified of their right to request legal assistance from their consulate. Ramos, a Mexican citizen, was not notified of this right and, his current lawyers allege, received “abysmal” legal representation as a result. Although Ramos requested a lawyer, no one was appointed to defend him until three months after his arrest. During the punishment phase of his trial, his appointed counsel did not cross-examine prosecution witnesses, presented no mitigating evidence, and did not even ask the jury to reject a death sentence. Ramos’s appellate lawyers argue that a competent attorney could have presented mitigating evidence of Ramos’s abusive childhood, brain dysfunction, bipolar disorder, and low IQ and that, if he had received the legal assistance that the Mexican government offers in capital cases, the outcome of his case would have been different. In their statement, the U.N. experts said that international human rights standards prohibit applying the death penalty to individuals like Ramos with serious mental health and intellectual impairments. Executing him, they said, would violate those international human rights norms.

In 2005, President George W. Bush declared that “the United States will discharge its international obligations under the decision of the International Court of Justice” and issued an executive order directing the state courts to review the cases. They did not. In Medellin v. Texas, a case brought by another of the prisoners whose Vienna Convention rights Texas had violated, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the President lacks constitutional authority to direct states courts to comply with a ruling from the International Court of Justice. It also ruled that the treaty was not binding on U.S. states absent legislation from Congress requiring state compliance. Medellin was subsequently executed. In November 2017, Texas also executed Mexican national Ruben Ramírez Cárdenas in violation of U.S. treaty obligations. If Ramos is executed, he will be the 21st person executed in the U.S. in 2018, and the 11th in Texas.

(UN experts urge US to halt Texas execution of Mexican Roberto Ramos Moreno, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, November 13, 2018; Keri Blakinger, Mexican national scheduled for execution in Texas despite claims of treaty violations, Houston Chronicle, September 1, 2018; Joseph Brown, Mexican national set to be executed next week, The Huntsville Item, November 11, 2018.) Read the International Court of Justice’s opinion in Case Concerning Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mar. 31, 2004) and the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Medellin v. Texas, No. 06-984 (March 25, 2008). See International and Foreign Nationals.