Death-penalty opponents here have scored at least a symbolic victory after a World Court decision this week ordered the US not to execute three Mexicans.

But even as Mexico battles to save its citizens jailed north of the border, there is fresh debate at home about the possibility of reinstating capital punishment.

Two political parties in one of the country's most crime-ridden states are holding a public referendum this month on whether to make kidnap, murder, and other violent crimes punishable by death. Recent phone and Internet surveys indicate that 70 percent of respondents in the State of Mexico support the plan, according to organizers.

Though the death penalty is still technically on the books in Mexico, this country has not executed a prisoner since 1937, and there is no provision for it in the penal code.

Mexico's soaring rates of violent crime have at times sparked talk of legalizing capital punishment. But it has been far more common to see top Mexican officials pressuring the US - generally without success - to stay executions of their nationals convicted of capital crimes north of the border.

Last August, President Vicente Fox canceled a visit to George Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., in protest after Texas executed Mexican Javier Suárez Medina.

President Fox argued that Mr. Medina, who was convicted of gunning down a police officer, was never given access to the Mexican Consulate, something guaranteed by the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Rights, which the US signed.

The US position - both in Medina's case and in the latest case before the World Court - was that Mexico was trying to interfere in America's sovereign right to administer its criminal-justice system.

On Wednesday, the World Court at The Hague ordered Washington to stay the execution of three Mexicans on death row, saying they had been denied their right to legal help from the Mexican government. When it brought the case to the international court last month, saying it had exhausted its diplomatic options, Mexico had been seeking reprieves for all 51 of its nationals facing execution in the US. The 15-judge panel in the Netherlands said it needed more time to investigate the charges, but issued stay-of-execution orders only in the three cases whose execution dates were to be set shortly.

The World Court has no way of enforcing its decisions and the US has flouted them in the past. But death-penalty opponents and lawyers at home and abroad say the US justice system is largely failing foreign nationals - as well as many poor Americans - charged with capital crimes.

Page: 1 | 2