Rights group urges stay of execution
OAS commission calls for review of Nicaraguan’s murder case
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has called for a stay in next week’s scheduled execution of Bernardo Tercero, condemned for the murder of a Houston schoolteacher, saying that his rights to a fair trial and due process were violated when the Nicaraguan national was not informed of his right to contact his nation’s consular officials.
The commission, an autonomous unit of the Organization of American States, called for a review of Tercero’s trial and sentencing. Should Texas execute Tercero, the commission concluded, it would be “committing a serious and irreparable violation of the basic right to life.”
In issuing its preliminary conclusions late Tuesday, the panel gave the U.S. five days to respond to its recommendations.
Tercero, 39, is set to die Wednesday for the March 1997 murder of Reagan High School English teacher Robert Berger during the robbery of a southwest Houston dry cleaning shop.
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 clemency peti-
tion also will be lodged with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. A review of the case, if granted, would be conducted by a Texas court, she said.
Additionally, she said, a plea for clemency from Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was forwarded to Gov. Greg Abbott.
Provisions of the United Nation’s Vienna Convention on Consular Affairs, to which the United States is a party, require that criminal suspects be granted access to their governments’ consular officials at the time of their arrests. On four other occasions, former Gov. Rick Perry refused to stop executions of Mexican nationals whose Vienna Convention rights allegedly had been violated.
Abbott’s office Wednesday did not immediately respond to a request for comment in the Tercero case.
The human rights commission also concluded that Tercero’s lawyers committed “serious mistakes” and that he did not have a chance to have his conviction effectively reviewed.
“As a result of the failures of his inadequate legal representation,” Hooper said, “there never was a full investigation into his background or social history as is required to meet minimum American Bar Association standards for representation in a capital case. Additionally, despite significant evidence of risk factors, there is no evidence that Tercero himself was ever evaluated for mental illness or intellectual disability, which if diagnosed would make him ineligible for the death penalty.”
Berger was fatally shot in the neck as he attempted to pick up his order at a Houston dry cleaning shop. His 3-year-old daughter was with him at the time of the shooting; his wife waited outside in his car.
Taking the stand in his own defense, Tercero testified that Berger was the aggressor who grabbed the robber’s pistol and tried to level it at his head. “I believe it could have been me or him,” Tercero told the jury, arguing that the weapon accidentally discharged.
Berger had taught juniorand senior-level English at Reagan High; previously he had taught at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts.
In a 1997 tribute to Berger appearing in the University of Houston Daily Cougar, former student Thomas Gray recalled Berger “never had anything but the best interests of his students in mind. If a student caught a splinter while working on a (theatrical) set, he would be there with a Band-Aid and a pair of tweezers. …
“His range of teaching stretched from the tedious to the abstract and from the technical to the intellectual. Whether it was oil-based paint or existentialist philosophy, Mr. Berger always had some knowledge to offer.”
Tercero would be the 11th Texas killer executed this year.