Capital mistake: Bush administration has turned back on international law

A few days ago, the Bush administration, despite the president's strong support for capital punishment and hostility to international institutions, announced what amounted to implementation of a ruling by the International Court of Justice. The administration ordered new court hearings in Texas and other states for 51 Mexican nationals on death rows who claim that their right to consular contact at the time of their arrest was denied. Whatever its motives, the administration acted properly, signalling U.S. willingness not only to comply with an important international obligation, but also to smooth out an unnecessary kink in U.S.-Mexican relations.

On Wednesday, the other shoe dropped.

The administration announced that the United States was withdrawing from the optional protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations that gave the international court jurisdiction in the earlier case. As a result of the administration's action, the United States excused itself from international court jurisdiction on future cases brought under the Vienna Convention.

March 10, 2005, 8:59PM
Capital mistake
With unilateralist pique, the Bush administration has turned its back on sound international law. Americans traveling abroad, beware.
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Once again we learn that if something seems too good to be true, it probably isn't true.

A few days ago, the Bush administration, despite the president's strong support for capital punishment and hostility to international institutions, announced what amounted to implementation of a ruling by the International Court of Justice. The administration ordered new court hearings in Texas and other states for 51 Mexican nationals on death rows who claim that their right to consular contact at the time of their arrest was denied.

Whatever its motives, the administration acted properly, signalling U.S. willingness not only to comply with an important international obligation, but also to smooth out an unnecessary kink in U.S.-Mexican relations.

On Wednesday, the other shoe dropped.

The administration announced that the United States was withdrawing from the optional protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations that gave the international court jurisdiction in the earlier case.

As a result of the administration's action, the United States excused itself from international court jurisdiction on future cases brought under the Vienna Convention.

"Sore loser," observed more than one legal analyst, correctly.

The United States is legally and morally obligated to allow foreign nationals arrested here to meet with consular officials from their country. The obligation is all the more urgent, given this country's propensity for incompetent defense before and during trial and wrongful conviction. When the United States denies this right, the international court ought to be able to hold this country to account.

What can President Vicente Fox of Mexico have been thinking when he sat down Thursday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to prepare for a summit later this month with President Bush in Texas?

As explained by the State Department, the administration's move was, at best, ingenuous.

"The International Court has interpreted the Vienna Convention in ways that we had not anticipated," a State Department spokeswoman said.

That resembles a Martha Stewart defense and is just as ineffective.

But the issue of consular rights is far more serious. By opting out, the United States invites other nations — many with far fewer homegrown procedural protections than generally offered in this country — to skirt or flout the consular treaty. A number of nations have signed the treaty without agreeing to the international court protocol, but key allies and trading partners, including Germany and Japan, have.

The administration is also turning its back on a procedure that the United States itself has found useful. As a result of the 1979 seizure of U.S. Embassy hostages in Tehran, the United States successfully sued Iran in the court for breach of the Vienna Convention, a victory that became a tool in Washington's public relations campaign against Islamic fundamentalists.

The administration's seeming acceptance of the court's jurisdiction stemmed from a case before the U.S. Supreme Court involving a Texas death row inmate, Ernesto Medellín, who is one of the 51 foreign nationals allegedly denied consular contact. Oral arguments are scheduled March 28, but attorneys for Medellín have asked the court to at least postpone the hearing until Texas state courts have an opportunity to reconsider the case.

Let's hope that the Bush administration was not attempting to play a double game, taking the good-cop role only long enough to get the Supreme Court to drop the Medellín case.

The state courts should begin to comply with the president's order. This should happen despite claims by the office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott that Bush exceeded his power in mandating new hearings in the death cases and that an international court ruling cannot be enforced in a Texas legal proceeding.

It's hard to imagine that the United States in general and Texas in particular could come to look any worse on the issue of the death penalty, but it's beginning to appear that they can.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/3079320