Emilia Vexler
07/17/2020 - 16:30
- Clarín.com
- Society
Víctor Hugo Saldaño is Argentine and is sentenced to death in the US On July 8, at a "comfortable" time for Córdoba, Argentina, and Texas, United States, there was an important judicial hearing via Zoom . Two senior officials of the State Department of the country that governs Donald Trump, a representation of the Argentine Foreign Ministry and Saldaño's mother and lawyer connected to follow up on the sentence.
He is the 47-year-old Cordovan who 25 years ago is in the death row of a maximum security prison in Houston waiting for his death sentence to be carried out. He was killed in cold blood by Paul Ray King , a Dallas merchant who he kidnapped in a supermarket parking lot, robbed and shot in a forest in 1995.
The coronavirus pandemic, which had thousands of victims in the United States even in prison, "extended" his life . But the execution of the only Argentine in history sentenced to death could no longer be delayed . So the urgency of the Zoom audience.
A photo taken in 2015. Saldaño with his mother and sister, during a visit./ Nicolás Aguilera / AP and File.
The loosening of quarantines - which was uneven across jurisdictions but slowed deadly injections -, the decline in new positive cases and the momentum of the US elections reactivated federal executions after almost two decades. Days ago, Daniel Lewis Lee was the first convict executed in a federal prison in 17 years. And, in Texas, Trump voters support executions.
"The ones that will be done are from the federal justice system, and Saldaño responds to that of the State where the murder was, Texas. He is not on the list of those who are about to die. But he may be. They can execute him tomorrow. it is the coronavirus and all its bureaucratic complications, it is the scandal that would cause them to kill him when we had this hearing to avoid it, " Juan Carlos Vega, the lawyer who represents Saldaño from Argentina , tells Clarín .
More than 40% of the 22 executions registered in 2019 were carried out in that State. And the "death row" of the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, where the Cordovan is, left many of his cells "vacant".
"The governor of Texas (Greg Abbott) usually gives his population a bloodbath with two or three executions per year. But we do not ask for his mercy (NdR: as in the movies, a call from the governor would stop his death), neither Forgive him. We ask that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which annulled the sentence for 'judicial racism', be followed . If Saldaño is killed, his death will be just as racist as George Floyd's " , stresses.
The link with the death of Floyd, the African American detained by a white police officer who, with the force of his knee against his throat, caused his death by suffocation, was the key to Vega's exposition in front of Catalina Páez, Daniel García -both of the Organization of American States (OAS) and connected from Washington- and Javier Salgado, of the Argentine Chancellery, who intervened as amicus curiae (as a "witness", because he was a convicted Argentine).
A letter signed by Víctor Hugo Saldaño to his lawyer. He wrote it in 2007. He asked that appeals be stopped and that he be executed. / Nicolás Aguilera / AP and File.
The case of the Argentine in 2003 led to the "Saldaño Law", which repealed the norm that gave foreigners a degree of "greater future dangerousness" than that which was foreseen for the natives. The IACHR said that the US is responsible for human rights violations due to racism and also said that the "death row" is not a prison but a place of torture , and that the US should order the release of the Argentine until the realization of a new trial.
"When I told him about Floyd, it took 20 minutes to come back to talk among themselves and respond. They put like crazy saying this was racism and Floyd was innocent. We never defended the innocence of Saldaño. Neither his mother did. We We ask for a fair trial. We do not condemn a foreigner to death in a racist trial , "he points out.
The US faces lawsuits from other family members of foreign death row inmates. But Saldaño is the only one for whom he gives answers. This, according to the defense, is because "he feels compelled to respond to the world." Both Argentina and the Commission.
"It is that there is no precedent for a death sentence that has been questioned and, with a final judgment, annulled by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Now the United States has to comply. Or say that it has a 'crown' in front of the world and kill when you want ", closes Vega.
According to Saldaño's lawyer, the current administration of the Foreign Ministry, with Felipe Solá at the forefront, "shows more support for the US to comply with what the Commission has decided." He says this in relation to former Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie, who, without the endorsement of the family, and together with the American lawyer Jonathan Miller, last year appealed the sentence in the United States Supreme Court. Finally, he refused to review the case and the Argentine was waiting for a date to be set for him to receive the lethal injection.
"The prosecution has not yet asked for an execution date, probably partly due to the coronavirus and partly due to the political situation," Miller told Clarín .
How is the mother of Víctor Saldaño
Lidia Guerrero last visited her son in November 2019 and, upon returning from Texas, told this newspaper that she would not do it again . "It would be morbid, nobody travels to see how they kill their son," she said. She still believes that "most likely" is execution. But, after the argument of linking the Saldaño case with the racism of Floyd's death, he had a twist in his vision .
Lidia Guerrero, mother of Víctor Hugo Saldaño, the first and only Argentinian sentenced to death in the United States./ Nicolás Aguilera / AP
Her relatives and even in Vega's studio - where she is going to drink mate twice a week for 22 years, when the lawyer took over her representation - say that "she is no longer surrendered . " He wants the case of his son, who he never considered innocent but a murderer, to become an example that just as there is police racism there is also judicial racism .
The same does not happen with Saldaño himself. As reported by this newspaper through the parts of the periodic visits made by officials of the Argentine Consulate in Houston, the Cordovan who asked his mother several times to let him die, worsened his mental and mental state .
"He sleeps 20 hours a day, barely eats the three meals a day and continues with his little radio connected to the world. Saldaño is no longer a 'person'. The 'death row', medication, loneliness, already they took away everything 'human' that was in him, "sums up Vega, his lawyer.
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