As I understand it, certain signatories have agreed to mandatory notification while others leave the decision to the arrestee. Does anyone know where I might find and official list of the breakdown?

Is this it?

http://travel.state.gov/law/consular/consular_749.html

once again, DC to the rescue. My defendant is a Mexican national who gave a statement. The defense has filed a motion to supress based upon failure to notify the consulate. I know that supression is not the remedy, but in this case, the detectives did offer him notification as an option; he declined. I thought it would be nice to show the judge that our cops had strictly adhered to the doggone thing.

We know the court may consider hearsay in determining preliminary questions of admissibility. Might the contents of this State Department website also be self-proving a public document under seal? Our thinking about what is a public "document" should encompass new technology, no?

[This message was edited by BLeonard on 08-26-06 at .]

Isn't it his obligation to show that there is a bi-lateral treaty with Mexico. (There is one, but I think it just tracks the Vienna Convention. See U.S. v. Carrillo, 70 F.Supp.2d 854 (N.D.Ill.1999) ("the Bilateral Consular Convention between the United States and Mexico ("Mexican Bilateral Convention"), Aug. 12, 1942, U.S.-Mex., art. IV, sec. 3, 57 Stat. 800, 809.")).

The main bi-lateral mandatory consular notification treaty seems to be 3 U.S.T. 3426. You can get that off of Westlaw but it's not in our plan and will cost a few bucks.

The main cases scuttling this complaint are
Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, 126 S.Ct. 2669, 2682, (2006) (it is "unnecessary to apply the exclusionary rule where other constitutional and statutory protections--many of them already enforced by the exclusionary rule--safeguard the same interests ... advanced by Article 36.")
and Rocha v. State, 16 S.W.3d 1, 13-19 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000);