 TEXAS EXECUTES CANADIAN NATIONAL
Last summer we reported on the case of Stanley Faulder, a Canadian national on death row in Texas. He was convicted of murder in 1977 and sentenced to death. He appealed, arguing his right to consular assistance under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations had been violated. On June 17, 1999, the US Supreme Court denied his last minute appeal, and less than two hours after that denial, the state of Texas put him to death.
Faulder, who was 61, is the first Canadian to be executed in the US since 1952. He was in prison, on death row, for 15 years before the Canadian government was told of his arrest and conviction. The Vienna Convention requires that foreign nationals arrested in the US be told of their right to assistance from their consular office at the time of their arrest. The US has signed the treaty, but Texas Governor and Presidential hopeful George W. Bush says the state of Texas is not bound by the treaty obligations.
According to Amnesty International, there are currently at least 73 foreign nationals from 24 countries on death row in the US. Only three of them were informed of their right to consular assistance. While neither this case nor any of the others is much followed in the US, in part because of the increasing numbers of state sanctioned executions, the US has come under increasing fire from the international community for its disregard of its treaty obligations. Canada, which outlawed the death penalty in 1976, has been quite vocal in its condemnation of the US’s actions in Faulder’s case.
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