Summary
Moises Sanchez-Llamas, a citizen of Mexico, was arrested after engaging in a shootout with Oregon police. He filed a lawsuit claiming that he did not receive proper treatment because authorities did not notify him of a Vienna Convention right to have the Mexican Consulate notified of his detention, and state courts refused to suppress evidence that he divulged once in custody.
A trial court dismissed Sanchez-Llamas’s claims, and both the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed the ruling. Sanchez-Llamas appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case and consolidated it with Bustillo v. Johnson. In that case, Mario Bustillo, a Honduran national, argued that American courts were essentially required to adopt the International Court of Justice’s interpretation of the Vienna Convention.
Alliance Defending Freedom funded an amicus brief at the Supreme Court arguing that the United States did not give up its sovereignty under the terms of the Vienna Convention and that the U.S. Supreme Court is not bound by the decisions of the International Court of Justice. In June 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that international court rulings do not supersede American law, nor do they give non-citizens special procedural protections in U.S. courts.