World Court: U.S. must delay Mexican death sentences

Reuters via Yahoo News ^ | 7/16/2008 | Alexandra Hudson

[E. Cartman]

And your point is????

[tom h]

That is a great idea. It would never make it into a debate but perhaps Fox News? O’Reilly could pose it theoretically and force an Obama answer via the media. Meaning, Obama has to take a stand whether the war was illegal or not, and whether Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are “war criminals.”

Regardless of his answer, he’s in deep trouble with some very large constituency.

[chihiro]

My point is: the Catechism of the Catholic Church says the death penalty should only be used when there is no other way of protecting society from the convicted individual.

In the modern world there are many other ways to remove a dangerous person from society, thus making the death penalty virtually unjustifiable from the Catholic viewpoint.

[E. Cartman]

Intellectually interesting but irrelevant toward dealing with the scum Medellin.

[Verginius Rufus]

In theory, society is protected if a killer is given life imprisonment (in practice, they are often released after a few years and commit other crimes).

The other issue is that of deterence--the existence of the death penalty may save innocent lives by causing a would-be murderer to refrain from committing the murder, so ending the death penalty may cause an increase in the number of innocent people who are killed. There was an article some time ago in The Weekly Standard that made that case (that deterence works).

[tumblindice]

Read the summary I posted of Medellin v. Texas. I know that a few here interpreted the result as the President Bush `masterminding’ the matter, but I read it as the SCOTUS basically telling the president and his secretary of state to mind their own business in the future.
The Great Helmsman can’t be bothered to protect Americans from “God’s children”, but he will `stick his oar in the water’ to encourage these Brussels sprouts and murderous invaders to challenge state criminal law.
So now the `World Court’ is ignoring our supreme court holding and pressing forward with its claim to ultimate authority.

[MirrorField]

Jose Medillin is the posterboy of someone who needs killin'.

First thing: I agree with the previous poster. Medellin is a piece of garbage, the disposal of which is a good thing indeed. However, in mindless pro-Texas pro-USA cheering people are forgetting several things:

*"World Court", aka. ICJ is not related to ICC and doesn't handle criminal cases. It handles international disputes between nations.

*The Bone of contention (to ICJ, at least) is not death penalty or whether mr. Medellin got fair trial. The bone of contention is whether US and Texas adhered to 1963 Vienna Convention of Consular Relations which requires that nation's consulate to be notified if foreign national is arrested. This convention is intended to safeguard the rights of foreign nationals when they visit other countries.

*US itself successfully sued Iran for violating this very same agreement during the 1979 hostage crisis.

Worse case scenario for US if it decides to wipe it's collective posterior with VCCR (hypothetical case):

Capital/EREWHON 20xx
The Mystery disappearance of Mr.X who disappeared in Erewhon 16 years during tourist trip is solved. Mr.X, american citizen, was arrested and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for allegedly (insert crime here) and has spent last 15 years in notorious PMITA prison while his family has lived in complete uncertainty regarding his fate.
The Discovery of Mr. X:s fate was purely fortuituous result of Erewhon's new automatization of local prison records, which allowed the search engine to note the disrepancy between...