Texas Executes Mexican Fisherman for 1985 Murder

Despite weeks of official protest, popular outrage and desperate appeals in the nation of his birth, Texas prison officials strapped Mexican fisherman Irineo Tristan Montoya to a gurney Wednesday and injected him with a lethal dose of chemicals for a 1985 murder he claimed he did not commit.

The execution was the third in three days and the 24th this year in Texas, which leads America in carrying out the death penalty. It came just after 6 p.m. CDT at Huntsville State Prison after the U.S. Supreme Court and Texas Gov. George W. Bush turned down appeals by Tristan’s family and the Mexican government that his life be spared.

In Mexico, which has no death penalty and where many view the United States as anti-Mexican, the execution of the 30-year-old convicted murderer capped weeks of national anger and frantic diplomacy by the government, which had appealed to Bush, the U.S. State Department and President Clinton to intervene.

The case highlighted the clash of cultures and laws in the neighboring nations and raised doubts about what, if anything, Mexico will be able to do for its 11 nationals remaining on Texas’ death row.

Early Wednesday, under pressure from opposition politicians and others in his anxious nation, Mexican Foreign Minister Jose Angel Gurria Trevino sent a final letter to Bush urging him to stay the execution for 30 days on humanitarian grounds.

Meanwhile, Tristan’s lawyers attempted to prove that their client’s rights were violated during his arrest for the November 1985 robbery and murder of motorist John Kilheffer in Brownsville, Tex.

Bush rejected the appeals, and prison officials carried out the sentence ordered by a Cameron County Court 11 years ago.

Demonstrating the depth of emotion Tristan’s case has generated here, protesters from Tristan’s home state of Tamaulipas filled the international bridge between Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, the border crossing closest to Huntsville. They waved banners saying “Save Irineo” and “Justice! Not Execution,” and they shouted slogans condemning the death penalty.

“Today, They Kill Him,” screamed a banner headline in one Mexico City newspaper Wednesday.

Television news broadcasts at midday led with stark images of Tristan in his spartan death-row cell. Some broadcasts included lengthy, live interviews with Tristan’s father and with Mexico’s consul general in Houston, Manuel Perez Cardenas, who visited the condemned man at noon and said neither Tristan nor his government had given up hope.

Perez said he turned down the Texas government’s invitation to attend the execution along with Tristan’s family to avoid any implication that his government supported it.

Besides, he added, it would have been hard for him to watch.

“It is difficult,” Perez told Mexico’s Televisa network. “It is a custom that we in Mexico have not grown up with. . . . We just don’t understand this.”

Earlier this week, Mexican author Octavio Paz, in a letter to Bush, eloquently depicted his countrymen’s view of the death penalty. “One offense does not erase another offense,” Paz wrote. “One life does not pay for another life.”

Tristan’s lawyers have said they based their appeals on irregularities in their client’s arrest, which came two weeks after motorist Kilheffer was stabbed more than 22 times and dumped near the Rio Grande.

Tristan signed a confession admitting involvement in the slaying but blaming the actual killing on another Mexican, Juan Villavicencio, who was later tried and acquitted.

Tristan’s attorneys say that his confession is in English, a language he does not speak, and that he believed that he was signing an immigration document at the time.

They also say police failed to advise Tristan of his right to visit with a Mexican consular officer after his arrest.