MEXICO ASKS PERRY FOR CLEMENCY

MEXICO CITY - The Mexican government announced Sunday that it has sent an
appeal to Texas Gov. Rick Perry asking him to cancel the planned Aug. 14
execution of Mexican citizen Javier Suarez, who was sentenced to die for
the murder of an undercover drug agent in 1988.

The letter from Mexico's embassy in Washington asked Perry to grant Suarez
clemency based on purported new evidence about his mental state at the time
of the killing.

"Neurological and psychiatric experts have discovered new evidence about
Javier Suarez' mental state at the moment of committing the crime. This
evidence was not considered by the jury, and surely would have influenced
the verdict," the Foreign Relations Department said in a news release.

The government did not specify what the new evidence is.

No one denies that the then 19-year-old Mexican citizen killed an
undercover agent who was posing as a drug buyer. But Suarez's supporters
insist it was a nonpremeditated murder, which generally is not subject to
the death penalty.

They say Suarez got mixed up with drug traffickers the same night of the
murder because they had threatened to hurt his family and that he shot the
agent in a moment of fear and confusion.

There now are 17 Mexican citizens facing the death penalty in Texas and 54
in the whole of the United States, according to ministry figures. Four have
been executed over the last 10 years: three in Texas and one in Virginia.

All ordinary legal means to halt the execution of Suarez, now 33, were
exhausted at the end of June.

The Mexican government has based previous appeals on supposedly
inadmissible evidence entered at a sentencing hearing, and the failure by
Texas police to notify the Mexican consulate of Suarez's arrest, as
required under international treaties.

Suarez was convicted by a Dallas court in 1989 of killing narcotics agent
Larry Cadena the year before. His execution date has since been postponed
14 times.