Humberto Leal Garcia

Leal, a mechanic, and moved to the United States when he was two years old. He suffered from brain damage and was reportedly sexually abused by a priest as a child. He was an illegal immigrant to the United States. On May 21, 1994, Leal kidnapped, raped, and murdered 16-year-old Adria Sauceda. The girl had been at a party and became intoxicated, and a group of men gang raped her. Leal is said to have offered to drive her home, and the two struggled when Sauceda tried to get out of the car away from the party. Official court documents state, "There was a 30- to 40-pound asphalt rock roughly twice the size of the victim's skull lying partially on the victim's left arm; blood was underneath this rock. A smaller rock with blood on it was located near the victim's right thigh." There was also an object in length extending out of her vagina, with a screw at the end. Leal claimed that she fell and hit her head. No one was charged in the gang rape. At the sentencing phase of his murder trial, the jury was informed that two weeks before the murder, Leal raped another teenage girl and bit her on the neck. Afterwards, Leal had repeatedly called the girl's older sister and threatened to have someone murder her if she testified against him. ==Case and trial==

, where Leal was originally held Leal was never informed that as a Mexican national, he was entitled to assistance from the Mexican consul. Critics of the decision to execute him said that he incriminated himself, which a better lawyer might have advised him not to do, and that he had other legal difficulties, including the court-appointed lawyer's failure to challenge questionable evidence. The jury convicted him after 45 minutes of deliberation. While on death row, he was originally held at the Ellis Unit. From 1999 to 2000, the state death row for men was moved to the Polunsky Unit (formerly the Terrell Unit). He had the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Death Row ID# 999162. ==Legal controversy==

, where he was later held The failure to inform Leal of his rights created legal controversy. In 1998, he appealed his death sentence on the grounds that police had not informed him that he could call the Mexican consulate. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had already upheld the sentence in February of that year, but international law had not been considered in the ruling. A 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice (in Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v. United States of America)) found that about 50 other Mexican nationals condemned to execution in the United States and he had been denied their right under the Vienna Convention to be told that they may contact their consular officials. A 2008 Supreme Court decision declared the international court's decision binding on the Federal Government, but said that Congress must pass a law obliging states to comply. Supreme Court case The administration submitted a 30-page ==Execution and reactions==

, where Leal was executed After 16 years of appeals, Leal was executed by lethal injection at 6:21 p.m. CST on July 7, 2011. He admitted responsibility for the crime and said he was sorry, and his final words included "Viva México". On July 8, a spokeswoman for Texas Governor Rick Perry stated, "If you commit the most heinous of crimes in Texas, you can expect to face the ultimate penalty under our laws." Euna Lee, an American journalist who was arrested in North Korea in 2009, criticized the United States' failure to comply with the Vienna Convention, saying that she believed "prompt consular access" protected her from physical mistreatment while a prisoner, and that the decision in the Leal case would encourage foreign governments to violate the rights of American citizens abroad. Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that Leal's execution undermined "the role of the International Court of Justice, and its ramifications [were] likely to spread far beyond Texas." ==See also==