Opinion ID: 767955
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Treaties' Historical Application

Text: 47 Finally, the manner in which the Vienna Convention and the Bilateral Convention have been treated since their ratification confirms the lessons learned from the State Department's interpretation and the treaties' legislative histories: Individual defendants deprived of consular notification are not entitled to raise their treatment as a defense against criminal prosecution. 48 Indeed, the State Department is apparently unaware of any country party to any consular convention with the United States that remedies failures of notification through its criminal justice process. Criminal justice systems vary throughout the world and in [the State Department's] experience operate independently of consular notification. Answers at A-1. Many, if not most, of the countries with which the United States raises concerns that consular notification obligations have been violated with respect to U.S. citizens will undertake to investigate the alleged violation and, if it is confirmed, to apologize for it and undertake to prevent future recurrences. Id. at A-3. This representation accords with that made to the ICJ by the State Department's Assistant Legal Adviser for Consular Affairs during the dispute with Paraguay described above. She stated that the Department was not aware of any practice [among signatories to the Vienna Convention] of attempting to ascertain whether [a] failure of notification prejudiced the foreign national in criminal proceedings. Verbatim Record (Paraguay v. U.S.), 1998 I.C.J. 426, at 2.15. As she asserted, [t]his lack of practice is consistent with the fact and common international understanding that consular assistance is not essential to the criminal proceeding against a foreign national. Id.The Department's written directives to United States consular officers are also instructive. The Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM) urges United States consular officials aggressively to pursue contact with American nationals detained abroad, and to raise concerns about failures of consular notification with the receiving country. See 7 FAM 410. Nowhere, though, does the FAM state or imply that such failures might be redressed in the host country's criminal justice system. Thus, the United States has never, to the Department's knowledge, asked a foreign court to consider a failure of consular notification during deliberation on a criminal case. These practices evidence a belief among Vienna Convention signatory nations that the treaty's dictates simply are not enforceable in a host nation's criminal courts, and do not warrant suppression or dismissal in any event.