Posted on 08/05/2008 6:34:44 PM PDT by NoKoolAidforMe
WASHINGTON -- Injecting last-minute uncertainty into a case that has garnered international attention, the U.S. Supreme Court considered a late-hour appeal by Texas death row inmate Jose Ernesto Medellin on Tuesday night, disrupting the timetable for his scheduled execution in the 1993 rape and murder of two Houston teenagers.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
And those of us in Texas will be the ones paying for it.
It only takes one justice to grant a stay so it could have been Ginsburg or Kennedy.
150 years ago? 60 years ago he would have been dead within 2 years of the brutal rapes, beatings, and murders. He and several of his “friends” brutally attacked these girls. A story that I read said that the girls always had at least 2 of the animals on them while they were raped orally, anally, and vaginally.
BTW, I saw on another friend that this animal has a webpage where he is seeking friendship (no, I’m not kidding). If he does make it through the night I’m going to see if he’ll be my penpal...
The only way was to reach someone on the SC. They knew they would be starting a civil war if the Feds came in.
I wouldn’t call this progress.
I wonder which of the Supreme Court Jesters was responsible for granting the appeal.
“If he does make it through the night I’m going to see if he’ll be my penpal...”
I’d love to be his “penpal” too!
Sounds like a prison guard just needs to beat him to death ... something like resisting a cell movement.
The Murders of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena (Warning: Brutal Descriptions)
Murder Victims ^ | unknown | Charlene Hall
Posted on Tuesday, October 09, 2007 10:44:26 AM by beaversmom
What happened...
Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were 14 and 16 years old, respectively. They were friends who attended the same high school in Houston, Texas, Waltrip High School. On June 24, 1993, the girls spent the day together....and then died together.
They were last seen by friends about 11:15 at night, when they left a friend’s apartment to head home, to beat summer curfew at 11:30. They knew they would be late if they took the normal path home, down W. 34th Street to T.C. Jester, both busy streets. They also knew they would have to pass a sexually-oriented business on that route and so decided to take a well-known shortcut down a railroad track and through a city park to Elizabeth’s neighborhood.
The next morning, the girls parents began to frantically look for them, paging them on their pagers, calling their friends to see if they knew where they were, to no avail. The families filed missing persons reports with the Houston Police Department and continued to look for the girls on their own. The Ertmans and Penas gathered friends and neighbors to help them pass out a huge stack of fliers with the girls’ pictures all over the Houston area, even giving them to newspaper vendors on the roadside.
Four days after the girls disappeared, a person identifying himself as ‘Gonzalez’ called the Crimestoppers Tips number. He told the call taker that the missing girls’ bodies could be found near T.C. Jester Park at White Oak bayou. The police were sent to the scene and searched the park without finding anything. The police helicopter was flying over the park and this apparently prompted Mr. ‘Gonzalez’ to make a 911 call, directing the search to move to the other side of the bayou. When the police followed this suggestion, they found the badly decaying bodies of Jenny and Elizabeth.
Jennifer Ertman’s dad, Randy Ertman, was about to give an interview regarding the missing girls to a local television reporter when the call came over a cameraman’s police scanner that two bodies had been found. Randy commandeered the news van and went to the scene that was now bustling with police activity. My first knowledge of the death of Jennifer was seeing Randy, on the news that evening, screaming at the police officers who were struggling to hold him back, “Does she have blond hair?? DOES SHE HAVE BLOND HAIR?!!?”
Fortunately, they did manage to keep Randy from entering the woods and seeing his daughter’s brutalized body and that of her friend Elizabeth, but they were unable to escape that fate themselves. I saw hardened, lifelong cops get tears in their eyes when talking about the scene more than a year later. The bodies were very badly decomposed, even for four days in Houston’s brutal summer heat and humidity, particularly in the head, neck and genital areas. The medical examiner later testified that this is how she could be sure as to the horrible brutality of the rapes, beatings and murders.
The break in solving the case came from, of course, the 911 call. It was traced to the home of the brother of one of the men later sentenced to death for these murders. When the police questioned ‘Gonzalez’, he said that he had made the original call at his 16 year-old wife’s urging. She felt sorry for the families and wanted them to be able to put their daughters’ bodies to rest. ‘Gonzalez’ said that his brother was one of the six people involved in killing the girls, and gave police the names of all but one, the new recruit, whom he did not know.
His knowledge of the crimes came from the killers themselves, most of whom came to his home after the murders, bragging and swapping the jewelry they had stolen from the girls.
While Jenny and Elizabeth were living the last few hours of their lives, Peter Cantu, Efrain Perez, Derrick Sean O’Brien, Joe Medellin and Joe’s 14 year old brother were initiating a new member, Raul Villareal, into their gang, known as the Black and Whites. Raul was an acquaintance of Efrain and was not known to the other gang members. They had spent the evening drinking beer and then “jumping in” Raul. This means that the new member was required to fight every member of the gang until he passed out and then he would be accepted as a member. Testimony showed that Raul lasted through three of the members before briefly losing consciousness.
The gang continued drinking and ‘shooting the breeze’ for some time and then decided to leave. Two brothers who had been with them but testified that they were not in the gang left first and passed Jenny and Elizabeth, who were unknowingly walking towards their deaths. When Peter Cantu saw Jenny and Elizabeth, he thought it was a man and a woman and told the other gang members that he wanted to jump him and beat him up. He was frustrated that he had been the one who was unable to fight Raul.
The gang members ran and grabbed Elizabeth and pulled her down the incline, off of the tracks. Testimony showed that Jenny had gotten free and could have run away but returned to Elizabeth when she cried out for Jenny to help her.
For the next hour or so, these beautiful, innocent young girls were subjected to the most brutal gang rapes that most of the investigating officers had ever encountered. The confessions of the gang members that were used at trial indicated that there was never less than 2 men on each of the girls at any one time and that the girls were repeatedly raped orally, anally and vaginally for the entire hour. One of the gang members later said during the brag session that by the time he got to one of the girls, “she was loose and sloppy.” One of the boys boasted of having ‘virgin blood’ on him.
The 14-year-old juvenile later testified that he had gone back and forth between his brother and Peter Cantu since they were the only ones there that he really knew and kept urging them to leave. He said he was told repeatedly by Peter Cantu to “get some”. He raped Jennifer and was later sentenced to 40 years for aggravated sexual assault, which was the maximum sentence for a juvenile.
When the rapes finally ended, the horror was not over. The gang members took Jenny and Elizabeth from the clearing into a wooded area, leaving the juvenile behind, saying he was “too little to watch”. Jenny was strangled with the belt of Sean O’Brien, with two murderers pulling, one on each side, until the belt broke. Part of the belt was left at the murder scene, the rest was found in O’Brien’s home. After the belt broke, the killers used her own shoelaces to finish their job. Medellin later complained that “the bitch wouldn’t die” and that it would have been “easier with a gun”. Elizabeth was also strangled with her shoelaces, after crying and begging the gang members not to kill them; bargaining, offering to give them her phone number so they could get together again.
The medical examiner testified that Elizabeth’s two front teeth were knocked out of her brutalized mouth before she died and that two of Jennifer’s ribs were broken after she had died. Testimony showed that the girls’ bodies were kicked and their necks were stomped on after the strangulations in order to “make sure that they were really dead.”
The juvenile pled guilty to his charge and his sentence will be reviewed when he turns 18, at which time he could be released. The other five were tried for capital murder in Harris County, Texas, convicted and sentenced to death. I attended all five trials with the Ertmans and know too well the awful things that they and the Penas had to hear and see in the course of seeing Justice served for their girls.
Two VERY important things in the criminal justice system have changed as a result of these murders. After the trial of Peter Cantu, Judge Bill Harmon allowed the family members to address the convicted. This had not previously been done in Texas courts and now is done as a matter of routine.
The other change came from the Texas Department of Corrections which instituted a new policy allowing victims’ families the choice and right to view the execution of their perpetrators.
For anyone who wants to be his friend.
http://www.friendsbeyondthewall.com/ppbtw/ads-male/m/medellin_jose_999134.html
I don’t know but it’s probably past the bedtime of several of them. As hard as they might try, I don’t see them staying awake until 1AM. Soon they should decide or adjourn.
Thanks for the ping on this thread. I find it ironic Jose pleading for his life. Unlike the deaf ears he had for Jennifer’s plea.
Black and White was the name of his gang. This man is a sicko and has not converted.
The penalty for a capital murder such as this one should be death. There shouldn’t be any question.
..This makes me ill.
I saw someone else mentiond the same thing on another thread. What an animal.
If this is stopped then we ought to put all the rest on a bus, drive them to DC, Handcuff them to the gate and hand the guard the keys.
They will find some excuse to overturn this death penalty. We’ve got a government of men, and not laws.
Aside from mentioning his old gang, “Black and White”, the sack of sh-t didn’t even mention his victims. The only reference to why the State of Texas is going to exterminate his life is phrased as an “adolescent choice”.
Humanity has always pretended that if we were to imprison the boundless existent of life, then we could understand this enigmatic universe that gives birth to our existence. By not acknowledging this unlimited existence of universal path, we fail to receive the rewards that has been extended to us. There will be many times that we may not get those things that we desire the most, yet in all of the misunderstood perceptions, we have the possibility of hope that allows us to rise and face the challenges that is offered to us.
Hi people of the world. A world that I haven’t seen in so long. My life is black and white like the old western movies. But unlike in the movies the good guys don’t always finish first. My name is Jose Medellin, I am currently being held on death row, in a state that is at the tope of the list for death row population, The Lone Star state of Texas. Like many here I strive to persevere.
I am a Mexican National. I immigrated to Texas as a young boy along with the rest of my family. Is not that I am not proud of my country, as you will come to know that I am, but with the hope, chance and opportunity for a brighter future.
I stand 5’6” inches tall, weight 165 pounds with dark brown hair and brown eyes. I am also 30 years of age, and been on death row for 10 years.
Some of my hobbies are reading books, fiction, non-fiction, I don’t limit myself. Because soon as we get fixed on it, the world will take its twists and turns again. So I have learned to interest myself on everything, plus I’ve learned that with the mind never set limits.
I also like sports, football, baseball which is my favorite. Baseball and soccer are cool as well. At one time I was able to watching this on tv but since we’ve been relocated, we do not have the privilege of tv. It’s a luxury not allotted to death row inmates. However, I do have a radio to listen.
When I am not reading or listening to the radio I like to work out. I do this to stay in shape and also to keep the blood and mind flowing. Since we are limited on our activities through 23 hours of confinement the inactivity will either kill you or drive you insane until death is the only liberator.
Let me tell you more about myself and my life. Now that so many years have passed by I have sat in this isolated cell and found new hope and have finally learned to grow emotionally and spiritually. It was on this personal road to growth that I have began this walk of endless hope. I have found this hope in the words and experiences of others. Your words, your letters are the light that guides me in this journey to better myself as a human being. My mind has become the very conductor that hones the flow of never ending knowledge that has taken me beyond these walls into worlds that I have never seen.
Now to talk about conversing through the mail with someone you don’t know, or have a preconceived notion that you might not get what you think you have coming meaning, myself. Don’t set boundaries. Please seek to know me, Jose. What I have learned is that through conversation you can gain personal growth. We all have the need to have a deeper sense of life and get it through others. Which only helps us reach our greatness. I am not someone you should pity or feel sorrow for. I don’t need that. What I need and seek is to fulfill myself and be the man that I am. I am where I am because of an adolescent choice. I have broken the chains that imprisoned me mentally for years. I now live with a free spirit that roams the sky free. In life we all have things that imprison us in one way or the other. But through sharing and understanding we can all break those chains that bound and anchor our lives from reaching their full potential.
It matters not who responds, male or female. The search for spiritual growth and understanding has no gender barriers. I just seek anyone with an open mind, truthful, sincere and honest. These are very important to build trust for a long lasting friendship.
I think I should bring this to a close. I’ve said enough for today. Thank you for your time in reading my words. Once again if you like to know more about me on an up close and personal, my address is seen above. (Fluent in Spanish and English)
Sincerely seeking a friend,
-Jose
There is a scheme to life, to all of its various happenings
and events to everything we do with the time allotted
to us. We can understand that scheme if we let ourselves,
if we do not become frightened of the knowing
knowledge, is not enough if there is not also acceptance of that
knowledge then comes wisdom, regardless of age. Anyone can share their
knowledge and their wisdom with you,
but once again only you can learn how to accept it.
That must come from within us.
*** Seeks Correspondence with: Anyone ***
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