Mario B Murphy, a Mexican national, is scheduled to be executed in Virginia on 17 September 1997. He was sentenced to death for murder on 19 October 1992. There is concern that he was not informed from the time of his arrest to his sentencing, that he had the right under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963) to be informed that he could contact the Mexican Embassy and ask for their assistance. His three co-defendants in the case pleaded guilty in exchange for sentences of life imprisonment. It is not known why Murphy, who was 19 at the time of the crime and had no prior criminal convictions for violence, was not offered the same plea-bargain.
