Foreigners on America's Death Rows

Capital cases involving foreigners as defendants are a serious source of contention between the United States and foreign governments. By treaty, foreigner defendants must be informed upon arrest that they may contact a consul of their home country for assistance, yet police and judges in the United States are lax in complying. Foreigners on America's Death Row investigates the arbitrary way United States police departments, courts, and the Department of State implement well-established rights of foreigners arrested in the US. Foreign governments have taken the United States into international courts, which have ruled that the US must enforce the treaty. The United States has ignored these rulings. As a result, foreigners continue to be executed after a legal process that their home governments justifiably find to be flawed. When one country ignores the treaty rights of another as well as the decisions of international courts, the established order of international relations is threatened.

'At a time when more and more people travel far beyond their own shores, the possibility to contact a consulate is an important protection against arbitrary detention and conviction abroad. In this volume, John Quigley, probably the most knowledgeable US expert regarding the law and practice of consular relations, gives a comprehensive account of the successful fight for creating an individual right to consular information and contact in international law and before international courts, and of the less successful quest for enshrining such a right in domestic law in the US in particular in cases where it counts most: after the pronouncement of the death penalty against a foreigner. This account is a timely and forceful argument for implementing international law for the sake of foreigners being detained and prosecuted in an alien court system.' Justice Andreas Paulus, Federal Constitutional Court of Germany and former counsel for Germany in the LaGrand case before the International Court of Justice, 'Quigley's book is both impressive and deeply disturbing. It depicts the grim story of how access to consular assistance by foreigners facing the death penalty, increasingly recognized as a human right, continues to be depreciated by the US judiciary out of a mix of stubbornness, ignorance and arrogance.' Bruno Simma, former Co-Agent and Counsel for Germany in the LaGrand Case and Judge at the International Court of Justice 2003–12, 'This is a meticulously researched and scholarly work by an expert on consular law on what has become a serious bone of contention between the US and foreign governments. Of obvious appeal to lawyers, students of international relations will also find this book of interest.' D. Ettinger, Choice, 'Foreigners on America's Death Rows will be of interest to a broad range of scholars - not limited to those working on American law or the use of capital punishment.' Robert Kissack, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 14

John Quigley represented the European Union before the Supreme Court of the United States in cases relating to foreigners under sentence of death in the United States. He initiated petitions in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for such persons, and argued that same issue in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.