Lawyers for Ramos had argued that he wasn’t aware of his rights under an international treaty, and therefore didn't receive proper legal counsel during his trial and sentencing.
Texas executed Robert Moreno Ramos by lethal injection on Wednesday evening, amid his lawyers’ continued pleas up until the final hour that the case be re-examined for legal violations from 25 years ago.
Ramos, 64, was convicted of capital murder in March 1993 for the February 1992 killings of his wife, Leticia, 42, and their two children, Abigail, 7, and Jonathon, 3, in Hidalgo County.
Ramos, a Mexican national, beat his wife and children with a miniature sledgehammer, and then buried them under the bathroom floor in the family’s Progreso home, according to trial evidence.
Ramos’ case had been a point of contention in both district and federal courts for years, due to requirements of an international treaty. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations mandates that when an immigrant is arrested and held in detention, he has the right for the consulate to be notified so that the foreign government can provide legal representation.
Lawyers in Ramos’ case had argued in appeals since 1996 that Ramos wasn’t aware of his rights, and therefore didn’t receive sufficient legal guidance that they say could have made a difference in his sentencing.
His current lawyer, Danalynn Recer, wrote in a 2015 filing that Ramos was instead represented by court-appointed, “incompetent counsel” who was poorly trained and failed to present “mitigating evidence” at his conviction and sentencing that disregarded Ramos’ brain damage and history of severe mental illness, including bipolar disorder, as well as his upbringing marked by “shocking brutality and desperate poverty.”
On Feb. 7, 1992, a neighbor reported that she had heard screams coming from the Ramos home. For nearly two months after the murders, Ramos dodged questions regarding his wife and children’s location, until his sister-in-law reported Leticia Ramos and the children as missing. In court records, it is noted that Ramos was having an affair and had married the woman three days after the killings.
Police questioned Ramos at the end of March about his family’s disappearance. After providing contradictory statements — saying first that his family was in Austin, then San Antonio and Mexico — Ramos was later arrested on traffic violations and brought to the police station.
Police obtained permission to search the house on April 6. They found traces of blood throughout the home. After another round of questioning on April 7, Ramos admitted that he buried the victims under the bathroom floor, where police eventually excavated the bodies from underneath newly installed tiling.
During Ramos’ sentencing, his 19-year-old son testified against him, detailing harrowing accounts of growing up under his father’s physical and verbal abuse.
Another woman testified that Ramos was likely responsible for the disappearance of her daughter, who married Ramos in 1988 in Reynosa and who had not been seen by her family since 1989.
Ramos was found guilty and sentenced to death in March 1993.
The Mexican government eventually filed a case against the United States in 2003 that bundled Ramos with more than 50 other Mexican immigrants sentenced to death in the U.S. who did not receive consulate-sponsored representation under the treaty. The case went to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which determined in 2004 that the U.S. government had violated the treaty.
However, after the decision, President George W. Bush announced that it would be up to the state courts to “review and reconsider” details of the cases. Ramos sought relief under the international court’s ruling, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed his appeal, and the Supreme Court denied a review of the decision.
In a statement released Tuesday, the United Nations called for a halt to Ramos' execution based off the treaty violations.
“Any death sentence carried out in contravention of a Government’s international obligations amounts to an arbitrary execution,” the U.N. statement read. “We call for his death sentence to be annulled and for Mr. Ramos Moreno to be re-tried in compliance with due process and international fair trial standards.”
In an early Wednesday press release, Recer — Ramos' Houston-based attorney — reiterated that the case is an example of a "freakishly improbable injustice," building on a filing from last week arguing that Ramos will “die without having received even one full and fair review of the constitutionality of his death sentence at any stage of the process in any state or federal court.”
Recer filed a last-minute plea for a stay of execution to the U.S. Supreme Court in the hours leading up to the execution scheduled for 6 p.m. Central time. The plea was denied shortly before 9 p.m.
Ramos gave a final statement before being pronounced dead at 9:36 p.m.
"I am very thankful for all the hard work the Mexican consulate put in a fight over my death sentence if there was a reason or not. I am thankful for the humane treatment that I was given here at the two prisons that I was at. I am getting my gold watch that it took the Governor 30 years to forge. Thank you God, Lord send me a chariot. I'm ready."
Ramos was the state’s 11th execution in 2018, the nation’s 21st.
Source: texastribune.org, Hannah Wiley, November 14, 2018
Mexican citizen executed in Texas for killings of wife, kids
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A Mexican citizen on death row in Texas was executed Wednesday night for the sledgehammer killings of his wife and two children more than 26 years ago.
Roberto Moreno Ramos was condemned for the 1992 deaths of his 42-year-old wife Leticia, 7-year-old daughter Abigail, and 3-year-old son Jonathan at their home in Progreso, located along the Mexico border.
When asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Ramos thanked the Mexican consulate for assisting with appeals in his case and said he was grateful for “the humane treatment I got in prison in Texas.”
“I’m getting my gold watch that it took the governor 30 years to forge,” he said without elaborating. “Thank you God. Lord, send me a chariot. I’m ready.”
As the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, the 64-year-old Ramos took a couple of deep breaths, sputtered once and began snoring. Within seconds, all movement stopped.
Eleven minutes later, at 9:36 p.m. CST, Ramos was pronounced dead.
He became the 21st inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the 11th given a lethal injection in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. No friends or relatives of Ramos or his victims witnessed the execution.
Mexican officials had called for his execution to be stopped, arguing he was part of a group of Mexican citizens condemned in the U.S. who were never told when first arrested that they could get legal help from the Mexican government.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday night cleared the way for the punishment when it denied two appeals seeking to halt the lethal injection. Ramos’ attorney on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to stop his execution, arguing that Ramos’ constitutional rights were violated as lower courts refused to fully review his claims that his trial lawyers failed to present any evidence about his mental illness and abusive childhood that could have persuaded jurors to spare his life.
Three retired justices who had served on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals filed court documents with the Supreme Court on Wednesday in support of stopping the execution. The ex-judges alleged the appeals court appointed an incompetent appellate attorney who early in the post-conviction process failed to investigate Ramos’ case.
Also Wednesday, a federal judge in Austin dismissed Ramos’ request to temporarily block the execution. The request had been part of a lawsuit Ramos filed against the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals a day earlier. The suit alleged the appeals court had not allowed Ramos to present claims he had ineffective trial and appellate lawyers.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had previously turned down requests to halt Ramos’ execution.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday declined to recommend either a commutation of his sentence or a six-month reprieve.
In court documents, Ramos’ appellate attorney, Danalynn Recer, had argued Ramos suffered from bipolar disorder most of his life, including during the time of his family’s killings, as well as brain damage that affected his ability to control his impulses and regulate his emotions.
Recer said Ramos was also brutally beaten as a child by his father.
Ramos was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico, and grew up in Guadalajara and Tijuana before his family moved to the United States in 1970.
“No fact-finder or decision-maker entrusted with Mr. Moreno Ramos’ life has ever been provided with evidence of (his) ‘diverse human frailties’ to assist them in dispensing the most severe punishment under law,” Recer said.
But the Texas Attorney General’s Office said Ramos’ death sentence was appropriate due to his “violent and dangerous nature.”
Authorities said Ramos bludgeoned his family members and then buried them underneath his home’s bathroom floor so he could marry the woman he was having an extramarital affair with at the time.
In court filings, the attorney general’s office highlighted testimony from Ramos’ then-19-year-old son, who told jurors at Ramos’ 1993 trial that his father “would continue to commit criminal acts of violence.”
In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, found Ramos was part of a group of 52 Mexican citizens awaiting execution in the U.S. who weren’t advised of their consular rights under the Vienna Convention when first arrested. It recommended they be tried again to determine if consular access would have affected their cases. Then-President George W. Bush directed states to reopen the cases.
But the Supreme Court in 2008 overruled Bush’s directive, saying only Congress can require states to follow the international court’s ruling.
Including Ramos, six Mexican citizens have been executed since being named in the international court ruling and all the executions were carried out by Texas, according to the Mexican government.
Source:
The Washington Post, Juan A. Lozano and Michael Graczyk | AP, November 14
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
