Government Is Pressing the U.S. to Spare One of Its Citizens Ahead of a Planned Execution Laignee Barron - TIME
go to original October 27, 2017

The execution gurney in the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas has seen more inmates executed by lethal injection than almost all of the other states combined (Reuters)

When police found 15-year-old Mayra Laguna’s body in a canal in Hidalgo County, Texas, in February 1997, they settled on a culprit just hours later: her cousin, Ruben Cardenas Ramirez.

Cardenas is set to be executed on Nov. 8 after two decades on death row – only, as a Mexican citizen, his case is fraught with tremendous opposition from the neighboring nation, and has raised questions about the U.S.’s commitment to abiding by international law.

After Hildago County authorities arrested Cardenas, they reportedly failed to alert Mexico, and allegedly neglected to notify the defendant of his right under the convention to speak to his country’s diplomats.

Cardenas’s defense counsel Maurie Levin argued to the Chronicle that the disregard for the convention changed the course of her client’s trial. Had Cardenas’s government been permitted to aid him instead of finding out about the case five months later, the defendant may not have given false confessions, she said.

Cardenas’s is far from the first instance of the U.S. executing a Mexican citizen. Previous cases have strained the two nations’ ties, and Mexico, which does not have capital punishment, has even launched a fund called the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program to help save it’s citizens from the U.S. death penalty.

But the latest episode stands out with allegations of miscarried justice. In the face of the charges – the abduction, rape and murder of his cousin — Cardenas has repeatedly claimed innocence, while the defense has claimed allegedly coerced confessions, what it calls inconclusive forensics and reportedly conflicting witness accounts.

Cardenas would be the 166th inmate to be executed by Texas in the past decade, and the 11th Mexican national to be executed in the U.S. since 1979, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Read the rest at TIME

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