Help for Linda Carty unlikely to come from International Court of Justice

On Thursday 8th July, Lord Faulkner asked the government in the House of Lords what representations had been made to US authorities about reprieving Linda Carty.

Baroness Neville-Jones, the Minister of State for Security, responded that the Lib-Con coalition was as staunchly opposed to the death penalty as its predecessor, and that the government is “committed to using all appropriate influence to prevent the execution of any British national”.

Lord Thomas of Gresford, a Liberal Democrat, then put three very interesting questions to the Minister:

“Is the Minister aware that Mexico and Germany took the United States to the International Court of Justice and obtained a ruling that under international law it was illegal to execute a person who had not had the benefit of consular protection? Is the Minister aware that the lawyer who acted for Miss Carty did not obtain such protection? Will this Government take a step similar to that taken by Mexico and Germany in respect of their nationals?”

The rulings to which Lord Thomas was referring were those handed down in the LaGrand case (Germany v USA) and the case of Avena and other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v USA), both of which concerned alleged violations of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention, which recognizes and enshrines the right of consuls to communicate with and assist their detained nationals. These provisions have come to be regarded as international norms, applying even to nations that have not ratified the Convention. In both cases, the USA was found to have breached the treaty (which it ratified without qualification in 1969) by failing to inform prisoners of their rights to consular assistance.

Baroness Neville-Jones answered that, while she was aware of the precedents and had not ruled out pursuing a similar route in the ICJ, the government’s current advice was that it was “not necessarily particularly helpful”. Lord Lester of Herne Hill commented that George W. Bush had attempted to give effect to the ICJ’s ruling but had been prevented from doing so at a state level, and in August 2008 José Ernesto Medellín, one of the Mexican nationals concerned in the second case, was executed.

The Foreign Office has been unfailingly committed to Linda’s case, but when even political and legal pressure from foreign governments, from the International Court of Justice and from the US President himself cannot persuade a state governor to stay an execution, it makes one wonder what sort of action would be sufficient to save her life