The Foreign Service Journal, October 2003

tion of foreign nationals in this country. When it was gradually discovered that the U.S. had been systematically ignoring the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Re- lations by failing to inform defendants of their right to con- fer with their respective con- sulates, and that some of these defendants had been sentenced to death, numerous objections were raised. The issue reached a crisis with the scheduled exe- cution of Angel Breard in Virginia in 1998. Breard’s home country, Paraguay, tried to intervene on his behalf in Virginia courts, in fed- eral court and with the governor — all to no avail. Finally, Paraguay appealed to the International Court of Justice at The Hague and received an order for a stay of execution. They brought this order to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the case was dis- missed, largely on procedural grounds, and the execution went forward on schedule. Germany pursued a similar route to stop the execution of two of its citizens, Karl and Walter LaGrand, who were also not informed of their consular rights. Again the ICJ unani- mously called for a stay of exe- cution, but the order was rejected. This time, Germany continued pursuing the matter in the ICJ after the exe- cutions and eventually prevailed in a ruling holding the U.S. in violation of the Vienna Convention. F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33 Although there have been foreign nationals on death rows in the U.S. in the past, the issue received scant attention until executions of such persons began occurring regularly in the 1990s.