Mexican National Executed in Texas, Despite International Pressure
The Mexican National who was convicted of the brutal rape and killing of a teenage girl in 1995, died Thursday evening by lethal injection at a Texas prison.
Efforts by Humberto Leal's attorneys to halt the execution fell short, with the U.S. Supreme Court turning back a stay request and Texas Governor Rick Perry refusing to grant a pardon.
President Obama, the State Department and Mexican authorities have all asked Texas for a last-minute reprieve, citing the U.N.-enforced 1963 Vienna Treaty, which requires foreign nationals who are arrested in foreign countries the right to access their consulates.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied a Mexican man's request, calling his argument meritless.
In a 5-4 decision an hour before the execution, the majority wrote, “We have no authority to stay an execution in light of an “appeal of the President,” presenting free-ranging assertions of foreign policy consequences, when those assertions come unaccompanied by a persuasive legal claim.”
After the decision, Sandra L. Babcock, an attorney for Leal, issued a statement linked to Twitter, saying her client will "suffer the consequences" of the U.S. stumbling on its commitment to rule of law.
"He will be executed tonight," she writes."Despite the fact that his right to consular assistance was violated."
Leal, who moved to the U.S. as a toddler, contended police never told him he could seek legal assistance from the Mexican government under the treaty -- and that such assistance would have helped his defense.
Adria Sauceda, 16, his victim, was found naked by authorities, according to court documents.
"There was a 30- to 40-pound asphalt rock roughly twice the size of the victim's skull lying partially on the victim's left arm," court documents read. "Blood was underneath this rock. A smaller rock with blood on it was located near the victim's right thigh.”
A "bloody and broken" stick roughly 15 inches long with a screw at the end of it was also protruding from the girl's vagina, according to the documents.
Prosecutors said Sauceda was drunk and high on cocaine the night she was killed, and that Leal offered to take her home. Witnesses said Leal drove off with her around 5 a.m. Some partygoers found her brutalized nude body later that morning and called police.
In his first statement to police, Leal said Sauceda bolted from his car and ran off. After he was told his brother had given detectives a statement, he changed his story, saying Sauceda attacked him and fell to the ground after he fought back. He said when he couldn't wake her and saw bubbles in her nose, he got scared and went home.
Last Friday, the Obama administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop Texas from executing Leal, asking the court to delay the execution for up to six months to give Congress time to consider legislation that would enforce the U.N. treaty.
Congress had three years to pass the bill but did not. Hence, it was impossible to pass a bill that would spare Leal unless a stay is ordered. A 30-day stay granted by Perry is another potential way for Leal to avoid execution on Thursday.
Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said if Texas disregards the treaty, it may have consequences for American citizens arrested abroad.
But the state of Texas appears to bristle at the idea of a foreign body affecting judgments in the state, even though President George W. Bush endorsed the U.N. ruling.
"Texas is not bound by a foreign court's ruling,” Katherine Cesinger, press secretary for Gov. Perry's office, said in a statement Wednesday. "The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the treaty was not binding on the states and that the president does not have the authority to order states to review cases of the then 51 foreign nationals on death row in the U.S."
For 16 years, Leal has exercised his right to file appeals and motions so extensively, one judge in federal district court called his case "one of the most procedurally convoluted and complex habeas corpus proceedings" he ever reviewed.
Meanwhile, in San Antonio, Adria's father, Rene Sauceda, reportedly begins each morning by reading a South San Antonio High School newspaper clipping from May 25, 1995 -- just after the first anniversary of his daughter's death.
"I look at that every day," Sauceda, 64, told the San Antonio Express-News. "Her friends paid to have that put in the newspaper. She had so many friends."
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