WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Texas courts were not required to give a new hearing to a Mexican on the state's death row, despite a directive from President Bush and the finding of the World Court that the defendant's trial for murder violated U.S. treaty obligations.
By a vote of 6-3, the court held that neither that international judgment nor the treaty was sufficient to overcome a Texas procedural rule barring multiple appeals.
Bush had asked the judicial system of Texas, the state he once served as governor, to help the government "discharge its international obligations" by giving a new hearing to the convicted murderer, Jose Medellín, 33.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused, a decision the Supreme Court upheld Tuesday.
The court, in a majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, concluded that the treaty at issue, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, was not "self-executing," that is, it did not automatically become binding domestic law upon its ratification in 1969.
Consequently, only the president and Congress working together to enact further legislation, and not the president alone, could make the treaty enforceable against the states, the court said.
Medellin was tried and convicted in 1994 for the rape and murder of two teenage girls without being informed of his right to seek assistance from Mexican diplomats.
Such notification to foreign nationals facing criminal charges is required by the Vienna Convention.
By the time his lawyers raised the issue, after his conviction and direct appeals, the Texas courts held that it was too late.
Mexico filed a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice, usually known as the World Court, on behalf of 51 Mexicans on death row in various states who had not received their Vienna Convention notification. The court, in The Hague, ruled in 2004 that the United States was obliged to have the cases reopened and reconsidered.
At the heart of the Supreme Court's decision were the majority's twin conclusions that the treaty alone could not bind the states and that decisions of the World Court were not automatically enforceable in the domestic courts of countries under its jurisdiction.
Roberts noted that Article 94 of the U.N. Charter, which governs the enforceability of World Court decisions, provides that "each member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision" of the World Court in any case to which it is a party. The chief justice said "undertakes to comply" suggests no more than a promise by a country to do its best.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer disagreed with that interpretation. He also said the majority had set too rigid a formula for deciding whether treaties were "self-executing." He warned that the decision threatened to destabilize the country's relations with treaty partners under dozens of treaties.
The two other dissenters were justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who signed Breyer's opinion.
Justice John Paul Stevens, while providing a sixth vote for the majority result, wrote separately and did not sign the chief justice's opinion.
He said the "undertakes-to-comply" phrase should be understood as a promise to enforce a World Court judgment.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
