Lawyers seek to halt execution of Mexican national in Texas

WASHINGTON: Lawyers for a Mexican citizen on death row in Texas were filing last-ditch appeals on Wednesday aimed at halting a scheduled execution that has been condemned by Mexico and UN rights officials.
Ruben Cardenas Ramirez, 47 is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 6.00pm central time (8am Malaysia) for the 1997 kidnap, rape and murder of a 16-year-old cousin.
Greg Kuykendall, a lawyer for Cardenas, told AFP he planned to file a series of appeals in the hopes of gaining a last-minute stay of execution.
Mexico, where the death penalty was abolished in 2005, has asked the United States to stop the execution, which comes amid tensions over President Donald Trump's plan to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it.
Mexican officials insist that Cardenas was not promptly given access to an attorney or the consular assistance that is allowed under the 1963 Vienna Convention.
"For the government of Mexico this is not an issue about culpability or innocence, but about respect for human rights and due process," said Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, the Mexican consul general in the Texas capital Austin.
Since the start of the case Cardenas "was denied the right to due process of law, as he was not granted prompt access to consular assistance", Gonzalez wrote in an opinion piece in the Austin-American Statesman newspaper.
UN human rights experts have also urged the US government not to carry out the execution.
"If the scheduled execution of Mr. Cardenas goes ahead, "the US government will have implemented a death penalty without complying with international human rights standards", wrote Agnes Callamard and Elina Steinerte, two UN human rights experts.
"This will be tantamount to an arbitrary deprivation of life," they said in a joint statement.
"(Cardenas) did not have access to a lawyer for the first 11 days of his detention," they said. "Some of the statements he made during this period were relied on by prosecutors during the trial."
Neither was Cardenas informed of his right to seek consular assistance, the experts said.
In 2004 the UN's International Court of Justice found that the United States had "breached its obligations under international law by not notifying Mexican authorities about the arrest of 51 of its nationals", including Cardenas, "thus denying them the right to consular assistance from their government".
Washington at the time rejected the court's ruling.
Fifty-four Mexican nationals have been condemned to death in the United States and another 75 are being prosecuted for crimes that could result in a death sentence.
Another execution is scheduled Wednesday in Florida, where Patrick Hannon is sentenced to die for a double homicide in 1991. — AFP