Ruben Cardenas v. William Stephens, Director

JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge:

Ruben Ramirez Cardenas 1 applies for a certificate of appealability (“COA”) to appeal the denial of his second federal petition for writ of habeas corpus. He claims that he is entitled to relief from his death sentence because Texas law enforcement officers did not inform him of his rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (“VCCR”) after his 1997 arrest. Because no reasonable jurist could find that the claim is meritorious, we deny a COA.

I

The facts and procedural history are recounted in exhaustive detail in several opinions describing Cardenas’s…