The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area Act constitutes a violation of prisoner’s right to due process and equal protection, and also hold that the Act interferes with the court’s judicial rulemaking authority.117 On 29 October 2012, a federal appeals court stated that the death sentence of Douglas Stankewitz, who has spent 34 years on death row in California, shall be reconsidered, due to ineffective legal counsel during the penalty phase of Stankewitz’s murder trial.118 The court ruled that the death sentence shall be commuted to life without parole unless the State of California initiates proceeding to retry the sentence.119 On 28 May 2013, in Trevino v. Thaler, the United States Supreme Court ruled that death row inmates in Texas can raise a claim of ineffective counsel for the first time in a federal court, if they did not have a meaningful chance to raise it in state appeals. The Supreme Court stated that the structure and design of the Texas system in practice make it virtually impossible for such a claim to be raised in direct review.120 Foreign Nationals As of 2 July 2013, there were 143 foreign nationals on death row in the United States. The states with the highest numbers of foreign nationals on death row are California, Texas and Florida.121 In November 2012, the London-based NGO Reprieve published a report on the United States’ compliance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Assistance in capital cases. Article 36 of the Convention obliges the detaining authorities to give a prisoner timely notification of their right to consular contact and to facilitate such contact if the prisoner so requests. The report found that, with regard to death row inmates in various states, there was only compliance with the Convention in 4.9 per cent of the cases. With regard to the inmates on federal death row, the report found compliance with the Convention in 25 per cent of the cases. In Florida and Texas the report found violations of the Convention in 96 per cent of the cases. In addition, the 117  “Emergency Petition To Invoke This Court’s All Writs Jurisdiction, To Declare Unconstitutional Provisions Of The Timely Justice Act Of 2013, And For Immediate Temporary Injunctive Relief ”, Official Website of Florida Supreme Court, 26 June 2013, <http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/pub_info/summaries/briefs/13/13-1123/Filed_06-26-2013_Petition.pdf>. 118  Stankewitz vWong, United States Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit, 29 October 2012, <http://cdn.ca9. uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2012/10/29/10-99001.pdf>. 119  Ibid. 120  Trevino v Thaler, Official Website of Supreme Court of the United States, October 2012, <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-10189_6k47.pdf>. 121  “Foreign Nationals and the Death penalty in the US”, Death Penalty Information Center, 2013, <http://www. deathpenaltyinfo.org/foreign-nationals-and-death-penalty-us#Reported-DROW>. 28