Angel Breard was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of Ruth Dickie
According to court documents Angel Breard would break into the home of Ruth Dickie. Breard would attempt to sexually assault the woman before she was murdered
Angel Breard would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Angel Breard would be executed by lethal injection on April 14 1998
Angel Breard Photos
Angel Breard Case
Despite requests from the U.S. State Department and an international court for a delay, a Paraguayan citizen convicted of murdering an Arlington woman was put to death last night after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case and Virginia’s governor refused to intervene.
Angel Francisco Breard, 32, looked dazed and fearful as he was led to a steel gurney and medical technicians attached tubes to his arms at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va. Asked by Warden David A. Garraghty if he had any last words, Breard murmured, “Glory be to God.” He was pronounced dead at 10:39 p.m. after being injected with lethal chemicals.
The execution was delayed for an hour and a half while corrections officials waited for the Supreme Court’s ruling and the subsequent decision by Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R). The delay gave Breard’s attorneys and the Paraguayan government time for another appeal to a U.S. district judge and the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeal was rejected
The Supreme Court’s decision came at 8:22 p.m., with the execution then scheduled for 9 p.m. The court rejected, 6 to 3, Breard’s claim that he deserved a new trial because he was not told at the time of his arrest that he had the right under an international treaty to consult with a Paraguayan consular official.
That left Breard’s fate in the hands of Gilmore, who had made it clear during the afternoon that he was leaning toward allowing Breard to be executed for the 1992 murder of Ruth Dickie in her Arlington apartment. About a half-hour before the execution, Gilmore issued a statement saying: “As governor of Virginia, my first duty is to ensure that those who reside within our borders — both American citizens and foreign nationals — may conduct their lives free from the fear of crime. . . . In this case, Mr. Breard received all of the procedural safeguards that any American citizen would receive.”
Delaying the execution, he said, “would have the practical effect of transferring responsibility from the courts of the Commonwealth and the United States to the International Court.”
Lawyers for Breard had argued that a consular official might have been able to persuade the defendant to plead guilty and seek a life sentence. But a majority of the Supreme Court justices, in an unsigned opinion, said there was no legal basis for Breard’s claims. They also said that Virginia’s violation of the international treaty probably did not affect the outcome of Breard’s trial.
“Breard decided not to plead guilty and to testify at his own trial, contrary to the advice of his attorneys, who were likely far better able to explain the United States legal system to him than any consular official would have been,” the court said.
Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer filed dissenting opinions. All three said they thought the court should take more time to consider the case
Several of the issues raised here are of sufficient difficulty to warrant less speedy consideration,” Breyer wrote.
The court’s majority was unmoved by last week’s decision by the International Court of Justice ordering the United States to halt the execution to give it time to review Paraguay’s claim on Breard’s behalf. The 15-member international body, also known as the World Court, has no enforcement mechanism, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Paraguayan government’s argument that the World Court order was binding on the United States.
Gilmore also had to weigh a highly unusual plea from Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who asked him to put off the execution because it could harm Americans accused of crimes in foreign countries. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which Breard alleges was violated in his case, also guarantees Americans arrested abroad the right to consult with consular officers
Albright wrote Gilmore on Monday that she was acting “with great reluctance” but that she was “concerned about the possible negative consequences for the many U.S. citizens who live and travel abroad.” She reiterated her request yesterday during a speech at Howard University. Describing Breard’s crime as “heinous,” she said she was seeking to protect “reciprocity” to make sure that “if any of our citizens find themselves in trouble, they will be accorded their rights.”
An Arlington jury convicted Breard of capital murder for stabbing Dickie, 39, five times in the neck during a sexual assault. Breard said on the stand that he had killed her because he was under the influence of a satanic curse. During the penalty phase of the trial, prosecutors said he had tried to sexually assault two other women.
Breard first raised the issue of the Vienna Convention in 1996. The federal judges who have considered his claim have ruled that he raised the issue too late, although U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams wrote that “Virginia’s persistent refusal to abide by the Vienna Convention troubles the court
Breard was the second Virginia death row inmate to raise the treaty issue in less than a year. Mexican citizen Mario Benjamin Murphy was executed last year for his role in a Virginia Beach murder-for-hire despite making similar claims. There are more than 70 other foreign nationals on death rows in this country, according to Amnesty International.
Paraguay raised the diplomatic stakes in Breard’s case by filing its own suit here and before the World Court, alleging that its rights under the Vienna Convention had been violated. The U.S. lower courts ruled that the Constitution bars foreign countries from suing states in federal court. Staff writer R.H. Melton contributed to this report from Jarratt
