Mexico seeks to delay Texas' execution of Mexican

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) -- Mexican officials pleaded on Monday for the life of a Mexican prisoner scheduled for execution next week in Texas, saying his treatment had violated an international treaty.

They met with representatives of Texas Gov. George W. Bush and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to urge that the death sentence of Miguel Angel Flores be commuted to life in prison or at least that his execution be postponed to allow time for further review.

Flores, 31, is set to die on Nov. 9 for the rape and murder of college student Angela Tyson in 1989 in the latest controversial execution in Texas, which leads the nation in capital punishment.

The Mexican government does not deny Flores is guilty, but it said it was not notified of the case until a year after he received the death penalty.

The late notification, said Mexican consul Gilberto Velarde, was a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Rights, which says that people charged with crimes outside their home countries have the right to contact their consulates immediately.

"That prevented us from intervening so we could try to help him -- above all, so that he could have had adequate defense counsel," Velarde said.

He said Texas parole board Chairman Gerald Garrett and Bush legal counsel Margaret Wilson were "receptive" to Mexico's request during meetings on Monday but promised only to review it fully.

Capital punishment does not exist in Mexico, which opposes the execution of its citizens who live in the United States.

Neighboring Texas has executed 232 people, more than any other U.S. state, since resuming capital punishment in 1982, six years after the Supreme Court lifted a national ban.

The state's high number of executions has been a difficult political issue at times for Bush, the Republican Party's presidential nominee and a death-penalty supporter.

The Mexican appeal closely resembled one made last year by Canada, which fought unsuccessfully to stop Texas' execution of Canadian citizen Stanley Faulder because his consulate did not learn for 15 years of his murder arrest in 1977.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had asked Bush to grant Faulder a reprieve on the grounds that his execution could endanger the Vienna Convention rights of U.S. citizens abroad.

Bush rejected her appeal, and Faulder, 61, was executed by lethal injection on June 16, 1999.

Attorney Sandra Babcock, who represented Faulder and is now representing Flores, told Reuters that the U.S. Supreme Court had been asked to review Flores' case.

She said the Mexican government had also filed a diplomatic protest with the State Department and was awaiting a response.

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