“Melissa Hooper, a lawyer with Human Rights First, an organization that has represented Tercero in the case, said a petition for a stay has been filed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals”. A prison interview last week with a Spanish-language Univision station in which Tercero talked about the crime and his case shows he is “well aware of his impending execution and has more than a rational understanding of his situation and the reason for the execution”, an assistant attorney general, Jeremy Greenwell, said in a court filing.
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During his trial, Tercero testified that he and Berger – who was in a dry cleaning shop with his three-year-old daughter – had struggled over the gun before it accidentally discharged. There have been 19 executions so far this year in the United States, 10 of them in Texas.
Tercero contended the shooting was accidental.
But the US president has few powers to stay a state’s execution. An Abbott spokesman, John Wittman, responded that state and federal courts have rejected Tercero’s appeals at least five times.
Denis Moncada, Nicaragua’s ambassador to the Organization of American States, told Agence France-Presse that since his country has no death penalty, “it seems pathetic to be on the verge of a Nicuaraguan citizen’s execution”.
Members of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center, CENIDH, holds a picture of Nicaraguan Bernardo Aban Tercero during a demonstration against his execution in Managua, Nicaragua, Monday, August 24, 2015.
“The Inter-American Commission concluded, among other findings, that the State’s failure to respect its obligation under Article 36.1 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to inform Bernardo Abán Tercero of his right to consular notification and assistance deprived him of a criminal process that satisfied the minimum standards of due process and a fair trial required under the American Declaration”.
He was arrested in Hidalgo County near the Mexican border more than two years after the slaying.
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A Texas court halted the execution of a Nicaraguan man Tuesday in a case that has garnered worldwide humanitarian attention.
