Court Opinion

ID: 9716067
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:24:53.594785+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:41.134859
License: Public Domain

MATHIAS, Judge,
concurring.
I fully concur with the majority's determination of the issues presented in this appeal under current Indiana law. However, because Alexander is a Mexican foreign national, I write separately to address his rights under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
Under the Vienna Convention, a foreign national who has been arrested, imprisoned, or taken into custody must be informed of his right to contact the consular officers of his country.3 See Zavala v. State, 739 N.E.2d 135, 139 (Ind.Ct.App.2000), trans. denied. The United States is a signatory to the Vienna Convention.
The record in this case does not reveal whether Alexander was informed that he had a right to contact the Mexican consul. While this Vienna Convention right to contact a consular officer is an important right that should not be ignored under any circumstance, failure to inform a defendant of his or her Vienna Convention right is particularly egregious in cases such as the one before us, where risk of conviction of the charged crime carries such a high penalty.
American citizens abroad would like to believe that they will be treated fairly if they have a misfortune that subjects them *558to the police, prosecutorial and penal authorities of a country they are visiting. But confidence in such fair treatment is unwarranted if we as a nation do not set an example in our treatment of foreign nationals under similar circumstances in United States courts. I would therefore urge law enforcement authorities to make such advice of a foreign national's right to consular contact standard operating procedure in order to help establish an efficient and objectively fair notice and contact process that compliments the Sixth Amendment indigent right to counsel.

. However, the Zavala panel determined that failure to raise the State's violation of the Vienna Convention at trial results in waiver of that issue and the "fundamental error doctrine is inapplicable ... because no violation of a fundamental right is implicated." Id. at 142-43.