Posted on 12/17/2004 12:34:11 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Jose Ernesto Medellin was 18 when, while participating in an initiation for the "Black and Whites" street gang in Houston, he was among those who raped and killed two teenage girls in a particular heinous way, a jury found.
In a petition to the Supreme Court, Medellin's court-appointed lawyers contend he told arresting officers he was born in Laredo, Mexico, and was not a U.S. citizen. Nevertheless, the International Court of Justice found, he was not told of his right to contact the Mexican consul, who could have offered translation as well as legal help.
Convicted and sentenced to death, Medellin lost his state appeals and asked for constitutional review of his case in the federal courts in Houston. A federal judge and, later, a federal appeals court, rejected his constitutional claims.
When Medellin tried a second time for review in the federal courts, using Vienna Convention grounds, his application was rejected. His attorneys then successfully asked the Supreme Court for review.
Mexico, of course, has filed a brief supporting Medellin's claims before the high court. So have the 25 countries in the European Union, joined by the Council of Europe, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
Perhaps the most intriguing brief in support of Medellin to arrive at the high court comes from former U.S. Ambassador Bruce Laingen, who was the highest-ranking hostage during the Tehran crisis in 1979-81.
Laingen is joined in his brief by Billy Hayes, a filmmaker and writer who spent five years in a Turkish prison during the 1970s, and wrote the book "Midnight Express"...
When the Medellin case is heard by the Supreme Court, it will be a struggle between the right of Texas to execute murderers and the power of international law, which once ratified by the Senate has the effect of U.S. law...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Thanks. Nobody wants to be a part of international treaties or courts until it is THEIR butt in Turkish prison.
Great.
Hopefully he'll be a real man and visit the parents of those raped and murdered girls so he can explain to them in person why he's intervening on behalf of their rapist and killer.
One could also avoid trying to smuggle hash out of a country one is not a citizen of. Just an idea.
Texas should move up his execution date and be done with it.
This scum should already be dead.
It's another attack on capitol punishment by internationalists and their ilk. Well, a pox on them. Guess if they want to rape and murder they will have to pick another state that is less barbaric.
> One could also avoid trying to smuggle hash out of a country one is not a citizen of.
Indeed. Yes, Turkish and Cambodian prisons are hellholes. But even there, you generally don't wind up in prison "just because." I've got, in principle, no problem witha foreign nation that locks up an American who knowingly broke a reasonable law. And "smuggling has is illegal" is a reasonable law.
Fine give him his phone call, then burn him.
False.
If this were true, the Senate and the President could amend the Constitution by means of international treaties.
Just as no law passed by Congress may stand if it is repugnant to the Constitution, neither may a supposed international "law".
In most other countries, you are guilty until proven innocent. The irony is that this Mexican guy (and the victimes families) probably got a fairer trial over here than they would have gotten in Mexico.
I would say that if you hold a US passport and you are not in a country on the State Department's watchlist the chances of you going to prison for a crime you did not commit are slim to none.
Most countries would prefer not to step on our toes by manufacturing fake crimes.
The fact is, the only countries we would want to have such a treaty with would also be countries that wouldn't honor such a treaty when the chips were down.
Unfortunately, in many countries you CAN wind up in jail "just because" you couldn't come up with a bribe.
As much as I'd love to see the scumbag executed his lawyers have a point. If the cops didn't inform him of the right to consular assistance then they dropped the ball.
Off subject but WRT death penalty - check out this link.
still alive!
http://www.ccadp.org/richarddavis.htm
life of crime
http://www.justicejunction.com/judicial_injustice_richard_allen_dean.htm
He has access to the internet and pen pals. Can you believe it!
He's welcome to call me...
"Midnight Express"
This movie was surreal. Is this guy still biting the tongues off of people who rape him?
Thanks for posting that. I see he was a "laborer", just here to do a job Americans won't.
What they did to those girls was horrendous, and he was right in the thick of it. I lived in Houston during the trial, and I couldn't believe how cold blooded a person could be.
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