Ray Bonner writes in today’s New York Times: “Reflecting an increasing intervention by foreign governments in American death penalty cases, Mexico has sent a formal protest to the State Department in an effort to prevent the execution of a Mexican citizen scheduled to be put to death in two weeks. The Mexican government has said that the condemned man, Miguel Angel Flores, was deprived of due process because he was not advised of his right to contact the Mexican embassy, in violation of an international treaty. Mexican officials did not become aware of the charges against Mr. Flores–in the 1989 rape and murder of a 20-year-old video store employee in Hutchinson County, in the Texas panhandle–until nearly one year after he had been sentenced to death, the government said in the letter. It was delivered to the State Department on October 19. In the last two and a half years, six states have executed a foreign citizen.”

Guests:

• Gilberto Villarde, a representative of the Mexican consulate.
• Sandra Babcock, Minneapolis-based attorney with a $300,000 grant from the Mexican government to represent Mexican citizens on death row in the U.S.
• Mark Warren, Amnesty International monitor on foreign citizens and the death penalty.