From: Sandra Babcock, counsel to Stanley Faulder
 

November 30, 1998                 For immediate release
 

                     STATE  DEPARTMENT  INTERVENES  IN  FAULDER  CASE

In response to initiatives by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has sent strongly-worded letters to the Governor of
Texas and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, urging state officials to give "serious consideration"  to the granting of a 30-day reprieve and full clemency review in the case of Canadian citizen Joseph Stanley Faulder.  Mr. Faulder's execution is scheduled for December 10th.

The case has become a major diplomatic issue between Canada and the United
States because Texas officials violated their binding obligations under an international treaty, by failing to inform Stanley Faulder after his arrest of his right to seek the assistance of the Canadian Consulate. Although the State Department has intervened in past cases involving death-sentenced foreign nationals in the United States,  the scope and significance of their involvement in the Faulder case is unprecedented.

According to Mr. Faulder's attorney, the State Department intervention should persuade Texas officials to halt the execution immediately. "The Secretary of State has sent a strong  message to Texas officials that Stanley Faulder's execution under these  ircumstances would carry serious consequences", Sandra Babcock commented. "It is clear from the contents of these letters that the State Department  has found significant merit in Mr  Faulder's argument that the denial of consular assistance may have directly contributed to his death sentence," she added.

Accompanying the two letters is a 9-page memorandum from Department officials submitted to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. It outlines the legal history of the
Faulder case and gives specific examples of the forms of assistance which Canadian consular officials would have provided to Mr. Faulder prior to his 1981 trial. The memorandum forcefully argues that this consular intervention could have resulted in the presentation of significant mitigating evidence at the penalty phase of the trial. No mitigating testimony of any kind was heard by the jury which sentenced Mr. Faulder to death.

In her letter to Victor Rodriguez, chairman of the Board of Pardons, Secretary Albright states:

     "I am deeply troubled by the failure of consular notification  in this case. Texas has conceded that the [Vienna Convention's] requirement of consular notification was
violated...It is clear that, but for these failures, Canadian consular officials would have visited Mr. Faulder in prison and offered him assistance before his second trial and direct appeals had been completed, when such assistance would have been critical..." (Emphasis added).

The letter to Governor Bush emphasizes that the terms of the Vienna Convention are binding on federal, state and local authorities in the USA and that ensuring the
protection of American citizens abroad--including over 300 imprisoned Texans--is one of the Secretary of State's most important responsibilities. After outlining the steps which the State Department is taking to ensure better domestic compliance with the treaty, Secretary Albright notes that:

     "These future-looking efforts do not eliminate the need to look carefully at past cases in which notification did not occur...the consular notification issues in this case are sufficiently troublesome that they may provide sufficient grounds for according discretionary clemency relief...In light of Canada's consular practices since at least the late 1970's, consular assistance could well have addressed issues such as Mr. Faulder's legal representation (which the courts have found was deficient in the penalty phase of his second trial)". (Emphasis added).

In response to the extraordinary intervention by the US State Department, Mr,. Faulder's attorney announced that she was immediately filing  the documents as a supplemental
exhibit with the US Supreme Court, which is currently reviewing Mr. Faulder's request for a judicial review. "This development underscores and reinforces every legal argument we have made concerning the significant impact of the treaty violation on the quality of Stanley Faulder's trial", Ms. Babcock said today. "Under the circumstances, it is clearly in the national interest of the United States to resolve this profoundly significant issue on its merits".

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