THE
LaGRAND DEATH PENALTY
Arizona Governor Jane Dee Hull made the final decision whether
convicted killer Walter LaGrand, a German national, would live or die
by lethal gas on March 3, 1999.Ordering a delay, the International Court
of Justice (ICJ) sought time to determine whether failure to notify LaGrand
before trial of his right to assistance from the German consulate violated
U.S. treaty commitments under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
Calls for a reprieve also came
from the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency, human rights organizations,
Catholic abolitionists, and Germany’s Chancellor, Justice Minister, Ambassador
to the U.S., and a member of parliament. Many others protested further
delay, seventeen years after a brutal murder--the U.S. Supreme Court,
the state Attorney General, local prosecutors, Arizona Republic editors, the victim’s son, and the victim who survived six stab wounds.
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Hull, a sixty-three year old Catholic Republican had been Governor for two years. Born in Missouri, she earned a college degree in elementary education, completed graduate courses in political science, and studied “principled reasoning and ethical decision making” at the Josephson Ethics Institute. A grandmother with four children, she had been the first woman speaker in the Arizona House of Representatives and served as Arizona’s secretary of state. [1] Despite international protests, she had approved the execution of a Honduran the year before. Seven foreign nationals from five countries remained on the state’s death row, and more consular notice claims were certain. [2] |
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In reviewing Walter LaGrand’s
petition for clemency, the governor became the final arbiter of
conflicting decisions by the ICJ and U.S. Supreme Court about domestic
enforcement of international law and world court orders. The globalization
of criminal procedure and human rights raised difficult policy and
legal questions for both national courts and state government.
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