On June 17, Stanley Faulder was executed in Texas,...

On June 17, Stanley Faulder was executed in Texas, becoming the first Canadian in almost a half-century to be put to death in the United States. Faulder, 61, died by lethal injection for the 1975 murder of an elderly Texas woman. The Canadian Government protested that Mr. Faulder's rights were violated when state officials failed to notify him of his right to contact Canadian consular officials at the time of his arrest. The right is specified under the terms of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty whose signatories include the United States. It wasn't until 15 years later that his family, who believed he was long dead, and the Canadian Government discovered he was alive. In May, a delegation composed of three MPs - David Pratt (Liberal, Nepean-Carleton, Ontario); Richard Marceau (Bloc Quebecois, Charlesbourg, Quebec); and Peter Mancini (NDP, Sydney-Victoria, Nova Scotia) - went to Texas and met with a number of state officials. In June, the OAS' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued "precautionary measures," requiring Texas and U.S. authorities to halt the execution so that the commission could fully investigate the case. Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, made a last-minute appeal to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to block Faulder's execution. "I urge you to use your influence with a view to stopping the execution and initiating a thorough review of this case," Robinson, the former president of Ireland, wrote. "The loss of life resulting from the execution of a death sentence is irreparable," she said, adding that the legal process was fraught with irregularities. Fearing the consequences of this execution for American citizens abroad, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright herself intervened, in vain, to ask for a suspension of the sentence.