US diplomats in Beijing had no immediate comment, although Xinhua claimed that their embassy had been informed of the trial date "in accordance with a Sino-US consular treaty."

The appeals court ruled that he could obtain no relief on the basis of the consular treaty because, by failing to raise it at his murder trial in 1994 he was procedurally barred from raising it in federal court.

In Mali v. Keeper of the Common Jail of Hudson County (1887), the Court denied another such appeal, holding that the consular treaty with Belgium had not deprived New Jersey of its power to punish a murder committed on a docked foreign vessel.