|
|
DEATH PENALTY-US: Life of Mexican Migrant Hinges on Psychiatrists
By Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, Apr 25 (IPS) - He is linked to 14 murders, which he said he was pushed to commit by an "evil force" and "the will of God." These seemingly contradictory statements and other testimony indicating that Mexican drifter Ángel Maturino is insane did not stop a jury in the United States from returning a verdict of first-degree premeditated murder, or keep the judge from handing down the death penalty. But they might now save his life.
His execution has now been postponed from May 10 to Jun. 27 to allow for additional psychiatric testing. The decision was announced last week, after Maturino's attorneys filed reports by two mental health experts who concluded that the 45-year-old Mexican migrant is mentally ill and is thus ineligible for execution.
"It was a positive decision, which must largely be attributed to the insistence of the lawyers paid by the Mexican government, because it is obvious that Maturino is not sane and thus is not eligible for capital punishment," Alfonso García, with the Amnesty International office in Mexico, commented to IPS on Tuesday.
Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, a government body, had earlier pleaded unsuccessfully for clemency in the case.
Maturino, known as the "railroad killer" because his victims were all slain near the railways on which he rode the boxcars, is on death row in Livingstone, Texas. He turned himself in to the police in that state in 1999, and was tried by a jury made up of 11 white jurors and two African-Americans (the jury included one alternate). None of the jurors was Hispanic.
The Mexican migrant, who before his arrest was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Top Ten Most Wanted List, asked for the death penalty during the trial, rather than a life sentence.
Maturino was born in a small town in Puebla, a state near Mexico City, and grew up virtually as a street child. He was 14 when he first entered the United States as an undocumented immigrant, which he did many times over the following decades. He was arrested 16 times in the United States for robbery and other crimes, and deported eight times.
He is implicated in 14 murders committed between 1997 and 1999 in the U.S. states of Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Illinois, although he was only convicted of the rape and murder of Dr. Claudia Benton in West University Place, Texas.
"The Mexican government reiterates its staunch opposition to the death penalty and will continue to take all legal and diplomatic action within its reach to prevent the execution of any Mexican sentenced to death abroad," states a Foreign Ministry document.
IPS spoke to one of the convicted man's family members who lives in Rodeo, in the northern Mexican state of Durango, where Maturino had a small plot of land at the time that he turned himself in to the Texas police.
"He was known around here as a calm, quiet guy. He was a bit of a loner. That's why we don't believe he did all of the horrible things that they say he did," said Maturino's relative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, since "because of him, everyone looks at us askance around here."
"He used to come and check out his land every once in a while, but he was always traveling, and said he was taking care of business in the United States," he said.
"Now no one is looking out for Ángel, we only know that he had lawyers supplied by the Mexican government. I sure hope God helps him, because that's the only hope he has left," he added.
At his trial in Texas, the attorneys paid for by the Mexican government argued that Maturino is insane and was not responsible for his acts. The prosecutors, however, brought in various witnesses who testified that Maturino is an intelligent man and knew exactly what he was doing.
Harris County Texas District Attorney John B. Holmes Jr. stressed the brutality of the Mexican immigrant's crimes, noting that Benton was not only murdered, but also severely beaten and raped.
Moreover, he added, there was evidence to show that after killing his victims, Maturino took their belongings and sold them, which demonstrates that he was conscious of his acts.
But this was not the impression given by the statements made during the trial by Maturino himself, who claimed that he had been guided by "an evil force" and by "the will of God." These apparently contradictory declarations are evidence of schizophrenic behaviour, according to Dr. Larry Pollock, who testified for the defence.
Unlike the cases of other Mexican immigrants in which the failure of the authorities to notify the Mexican consulate of their arrest served a key role in the legal strategy of their defence attorneys, this requirement was duly fulfilled after Maturino was arrested.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled in late March 2004 that the United States had violated the rights of 51 Mexican nationals by sentencing them to death without having provided them with the opportunity for consular assistance at the time of their arrest and trial.
Thanks to this ruling, the result of a case brought before the Court by Mexico, the government of Vicente Fox has succeeded until now in staying the execution of the Mexican nationals on death row in the United States.
In January, the Texas court ordered that Maturino's death sentence be carried out on May 10, making him the first Mexican to have a precise execution date set since March 2004.
That same month, another Mexican immigrant, Osvaldo Torres, had been scheduled for execution in the state of Oklahoma, but his death sentence was commuted at the last minute to life in prison.
The last Mexican executed in the United States was Javier Suárez, in August 2002 in Texas. Before that, four of his compatriots had met a similar fate.
There are over 20,000 people sentenced to death around the world today, according to an Amnesty International report released Apr. 20.
The London-based human rights watchdog reported that at least 2,148 people were executed in 2005 in 22 countries, 94 percent of them in Saudi Arabia, China, the United States and Iran. That same year, another 5,186 people were sentenced to death in 53 countries.
"The number of countries carrying out executions has dropped for a fourth consecutive year; over the last twenty years, numbers have halved," the report states, noting that Mexico and Liberia are the latest countries to abolish capital punishment, in 2005..
"As the world continues to turn away from the use of the death penalty, it is a glaring anomaly that China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the USA stand out for their extreme use of this form of punishment as the ‘top' executioners in the world," declared Amnesty International secretary general Irene Khan.
(END/2006)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
What is RSS?
