Executions delayed in two US states

An Oklahoma state appeals court has ordered an indefinite halt to the execution of a Mexican national whose case drew appeals from Mexican President Vicente Fox.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals said yesterday that Gerardo Valdez’s appeal raised questions about whether his rights were violated under the Vienna Convention.

The panel said the order would remain in effect ‘‘until the further order of the court’’.

Lawyers are seeking a new trial for Valdez, 41, who killed Juan Barron in Chickasha, Oklahoma, in 1989.

Their appeal was based partly on the International Court of Justice’s recent criticism of Arizona’s 1999 execution of German bothers Walter and Karl LaGrand.

The international court held that the execution violated the Vienna Convention because the brothers were not given the right to contact their consul after their arrest. Valdez was also denied the right to contact his consul, said Valdez’s attorney, Robert Nance.

Meanwhile, in Cincinnati, Ohio, a federal appeals court postponed Wednesday’s scheduled execution of a convicted killer who has chosen the electric chair over lethal injection to illustrate what he says is the brutality of capital punishment.

A three-judge panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals denied John W Byrd Jr’s requests to re-examine his case and stop the execution, but a member of the panel asked for more time for the full court to study the case.

The execution was postponed until September 18.

Earlier yesterday, Gov Bob Taft denied Byrd clemency.

Byrd would be the first inmate to die in Ohio’s electric chair in 38 years.

He claims an accomplice stabbed a clerk to death in a 1983 robbery at a Cincinnati convenience store.

Ohio lets condemned inmates choose between electrocution and lethal injection.

Byrd chose the electric chair, saying through his attorneys that he wants to make it harder on his executioners and confront them with the brutality of capital punishment.

In July, Ohio prisons director Reginald Wilkinson urged the state to retire the 104-year-old electric chair, saying possible malfunctions could be too stressful for prison staff members. Ohio’s electric chair was last used in 1963.

The only two executions in Ohio since 1963 have been carried out by injection.