Defying an order from the judicial arm of the United...

Defying an order from the judicial arm of the United Nations and the request of its state attorney general, in a 3-2 decision the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals sceduled a May 18 execution date for Osvaldo Torres, a Mexican prisoner sentenced to death for participating in a 1993 double murder.
In 2003, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ordered the US not to execute Mr. Torres or two other Mexicans pending the outcome of Mexico's case against Washington alleging that its nationals' rights were violated.
In November 2003, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson asked the state court not to set an execution date "out of courtesy" to the world court, although he asserted its order couldn't bind Oklahoma.
Judge Gary Lumpkin, one of three judges voting to schedule the execution, wrote that such courtesy was unwarranted. "The parties seem to forget the United States of America is a sovereign nation founded on the rule of law." Delaying an execution pending the world-court opinion "would be to violate the law we have sworn to uphold."
Like dozens of other Mexicans, Mr. Torres was arrested, tried and convicted without his consulate being notified. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a 1963 treaty ratified by Mexico and the US, provides for foreign consulates to be notified when their nationals are detained. Both Mexico and the US ratified an annex giving the world court jurisdiction to interpret the treaty.
In 2003, Mexico filed suit against the US, claiming Mr. Torres and 51 other Mexicans in 10 states had been sent to death row in violation of the Vienna Convention. Mexico asked the world court to vacate the sentences, contending that consular notification was a fundamental right akin to having a competent attorney.
The US strongly disputed those claims, arguing that defendants had received fair trials under American law and that the world court shouldn't interfere with their sentences.