NewsMax.com Wires
Friday, May 14, 2004

Henry commuted the death sentence of Osbaldo Torres to life in prison without parole, shortly after a divided Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals earlier Thursday granted the 29-year-old an indefinite stay of execution.

The appeals court, 3-2, granted Torres' request for a lower-court hearing on the state's failure to inform him of his right to contact the Mexican consulate after his arrest. The Torres family contacted the Mexican consulate only after Torres had been on death row for nearly a year.

The governor's decision makes the appeals court's decision moot.

The Pardon and Parole Board earlier this month recommended clemency for Torres, who had been scheduled to die Tuesday for the 1993 deaths of Francisco Morales and Maria Yanez.

"My heart goes out to the family of Mr. Morales and Ms. Yanez. This was a difficult decision, but I believe clemency is warranted by a number of issues involved in this case," Henry said in a statement.

Torres is one of 51 Mexicans on death row nationwide cited in a March 31 ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. The world court found the inmates' rights were violated because they were not told they could receive help from their governments as guaranteed by the 1963 Vienna Convention.

'Mexicans Have More Power Than Us'

"I knew it was all going to be politics," said Yanez's brother, Jim Garcia. "I'm so frustrated and mad right now.

"I'm upset that we let the Mexicans come over here and have more power than us. I was hoping for something better, but he'll get what he deserves in the end."

Henry said he made his decision after hearing arguments from the state Attorney General's office, Torres' appellate defense attorneys and the victims' relatives. He had rejected the three previous clemency recommendations the parole board had issued since he took office last year.

Torres and co-defendant George Ochoa were convicted in 1996 in the deaths of Morales and Yanez. Torres has said he thought he and Ochoa were just going to burglarize a home and didn't know Ochoa planned to kill anyone. No execution date has been set for Ochoa, who has several appeals pending.

The state has acknowledged that Torres' rights under the Vienna Convention were violated. But Charlie Price, a spokesman for Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, said Torres would have been convicted and sentenced to death even if consular officials had been contacted.

Defense attorney Mark Henricksen, however, said he believes that if Mexican officials had intervened, "it's very likely there would have been a different outcome in this case."

"Mexico has a demonstrated history, when they receive pretrial notification, to help ... wherever they can," Henricksen said.

Writing for the majority on the appeals court, Judge Charles Chapel said, "I have concluded that there is a possibility a significant miscarriage of justice occurred."

Judge Gary Lumpkin, however, argued that Torres had been represented by competent lawyers at each stage of his proceedings and had been afforded all the rights guaranteed to citizens of the United States.

Mexican officials launched a letter-writing campaign and enlisted the support of other nations to convince the state not to execute Torres. The European Union had also asked that the execution be stayed.

"We are enormously pleased by this, because it saves Osbaldo Torres from execution," Arturo Dager Gomez, chief legal counsel for Mexico's Foreign Relations Department, told the government news agency Notimex on Thursday.

© 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Editor's note: