DATE: Wednesday, September 17, 1997         TAG: 9709170509

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   85 lines

HELMS, OTHERS GET INVOLVED AS EXECUTION GROWS NEAR

The government of Mexico, U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, the U.S. State Department and the Southern Baptist Convention all weighed in with Gov. George F. Allen's office Tuesday regarding the scheduled execution tonight of Mario Benjamin Murphy.

Mark Christie, Allen's counsel on clemency requests, took it all in stride.

``There have been other high-visibility cases before,'' he said.

``And the same thing applies in all of them. That is that the governor goes on the merits of the case and the record of the case and the facts of the case. He doesn't go on publicity.''

Murphy, a 25-year-old citizen of Mexico, was sentenced to death for his role in a 1991 Virginia Beach murder-for-hire case. Of the six defendants charged in the case, Murphy was the only one not offered a life sentence in exchange for a guilty plea.

Murphy would not have been sentenced to death, his lawyers maintain, if Virginia Beach officials had adhered to the terms of an international treaty by notifying the Mexican embassy of his arrest.

In recent months, the Mexican government joined Murphy's lawyers in a campaign for clemency from Allen. Last week, Mexican officials offered to incarcerate Murphy in a Mexican prison should Allen agree to spare his life.

On Tuesday morning, Christie spent 30 minutes on a conference call with Mexico Secretary of Foreign Relations Jose Angel Gurria and two other officials.

``Mark Christie assured Mr. Gurria that the governor's office had investigated and concluded that there was no discriminatory basis for Mario getting the death penalty and the other death-eligible defendants getting life sentences,'' said Bonnie Goldstein, a Dallas lawyer retained by Mexico who sat in on the call.

``Mexico's response was that there is a difference between fact and perception and that Mexico had not been involved and so could not ensure that there was no discrimination,'' she said.

Allen and Christie also heard from Sen. Helms, the Republican from North Carolina who heads the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

``I do not write to influence your decision in Mr. Murphy's case,'' Christie said Helms wrote in a letter to Allen. Christie said Helms enclosed written transcripts of committee hearings held in 1969 regarding the ratification of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations - the treaty Virginia officials violated when they failed to notify the Mexican embassy of Murphy's arrest.

Along with the letter from Helms came a letter from the State Department announcing that it plans to ``convey to the Embassy of Mexico, on behalf of the Government of the United States. . . deepest regrets over the apparent failure of consular notification in this case.''

Written by State Department legal adviser David Andrews, that letter urged Allen to ``give careful consideration'' to Murphy's clemency petition and to ``submissions made on Mr. Murphy's behalf directly by the Embassy of Mexico.''

Allen got a letter Monday from the president of the International Mission Board of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention. Murphy's death sentence should be commuted, Mission Board President Jerry Rankin wrote. Otherwise, the SBC's missionaries could suffer the consequences.

``I am horrified to think of the potential repercussions in Mexico and other countries, and its potential harm to our missionaries,'' Rankin wrote.

Rankin, who called himself a ``supporter of capital punishment because. . . it is biblical and an effective deterrent to crime,'' was out of town Tuesday. But the Mission Board's vice president, Don Kammerdiener, echoed his sentiments.

``Our concern is that we have 4,237 missionaries scattered in 26 countries all over the world,'' Kammerdiener said.

``They will not be accused of murder, but they can be involved in auto accidents and other types of difficulties with the law and we rely very heavily on their ability to contact American authorities and make sure they have access to their rights.

``If this nation does not honor the agreement, how can we expect other nations to honor it?''

Rankin's letter mentioned several incidents - in Tanzania, Thailand, Chile and Turkey - in which missionaries were arrested and accused of various crimes.

``In all of these cases,'' he wrote, ``there was clemency due to accessibility and representation of the United States Consul who was allowed to provide legal counsel and involvement of our government in the cases.''

The SBC has roughly 70 missionaries in Mexico, said Kammerdiener.

Murphy's execution is scheduled for 9 p.m. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Mario Murphy is scheduled to be put to death tonight at 9, barring

the intervention of Gov. George F. Allen. KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT MURDER DEATH ROW

MEXICO

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