Reply #59: What the US did followed US law. [View All]

The treaty didn't overwrite large stretches of American law, nor did it give the international court jurisdiction deep into the political system of the United States.

In other words, the US violated what many believed the treaty required. The way the treaty interacted with US law, however, means that the many were completely wrong. The treaty didn't grant Congress and the president more authority than they already had, and they chose not to use that authority. The treaty only means what it's interpreted to mean. We can argue that it was interpreted differently before 2007, but after 2007 steps should have been taken to bring what the US legal system said the treaty meant with what the "many" said it meant. Nobody did that. That is the real problem here.

Moreover, Leal for years didn't say he was a Mexican national. The only way to find out he was an illegal immigrant would have been to say, "Ah, he's brown-skinned and Hispanic-surnamed, he may be an illegal immigrant, let's run his ID through INS and see what they say." At the time there was no program of ID checking like Secure Communities, one that many progressives consider racist.

What needs to be asked is the following: If, during the trial, Leal had said, "I'm a Mexican national, I demand to contact my consulate," would he have been allowed to? I have no reason to think Texas wouldn't have voluntarily complied with the treaty provisions. It has in many other cases, so it's a reasonable assumption to make--meaning that Leal denied himself by not declaring himself a foreign national. We can't assume that the US federal government is omniscient and just knows that a given arrestee is a foreign national. Yet that's the assumption--by not acting on information not available, there's intentional breaking of a treaty. That's a strained accusation, much like my telling my wife, "You've done it again--you forgot to pick up the milk I forgot to ask you to get." When I say it I know I'm really directing the blame at myself. If only those blaming the US over Leal had the same kind of honesty, they'd really be forced to blame the victim. Why? Because victims aren't always without responsibility.

Now, for much of the time he didn't know, it would appear, that he was a foreign national. He was denied that knowledge, and whoever denied him that knowledge effectively disallowed his consular access. To grant a new trial based on his not saying he was a foreign national sounds good--but it automatically means that any foreign national could also use the same gambit intentionally, making sure that instead of one trial they get two trials.