Death Penalty Case Puts Bush and Texas at Odds Over Mexican's Fate

ClickonDetroit ^ | October 7, 2007 | AP

[ShadowDancer]

Death Penalty Case Puts Bush and Texas at Odds Over Mexican's Fate

Sunday, October 07, 2007

WASHINGTON — President Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the state's execution of a Mexican national for the brutal killing of two teenage girls.

The case of Jose Ernesto Medellin has become a confusing test of presidential power that the U.S. Supreme Court, which hears the case this week, ultimately will sort out.

The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated their rights to legal help as outlined in the 1963 Vienna Convention.

That is the same court Bush has since said he plans to ignore if it makes similar decisions affecting state criminal laws.

"The president does not agree with the ICJ's interpretation of the Vienna Convention," the administration said in arguments filed with the court. This time, though, the U.S. agreed to abide by the international court's decision because ignoring it would harm American interests abroad, the government said.

[stevie_d_64]

Thats kinda cruel to the dog wouldn’t you say???

;-)

[Iron Munro]

Thanks for the link to the site about the victims, Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena.

This is a true tragedy.

I (and my whole family) are so frustrated with President Bush. He has totally gone over to the other side. If the democrats had run a half-sane candidate against him in either 2000 or 2004 he would not have won either election.
Sad to say, almost all of our voting in national elections has been made on the basis of who to vote against as opposed to voting for someone we truly like and support. That is certainly true in both of these elections.

If Bush was truly the Compassionate Conservative he claims to be, he would not be fighting this battle.
He would be standing tall and proud supporting justice for Jennifer and Elizabeth, for Ramos and Campion, and for all citizens who suffer harm and loss at the hands of illegals.

The president has joined Ted Kennedy and his kind in giving America to the savages in return for cheap labor.
Is it too late for us to ever have a true conservative in the White House again?

[Guenevere]

I honestly don't know if our nation will survive another year of 'this'.....

..and what do we have to look forward to in the election?....

Only God's intervention, if He wills, can help us, IMO

[McLynnan]

Texas is going to tell Bush, tell the International Elite to pound sand. Unless, Rick Perry caves.

Perry should think this one through very carefully. Texans are fed up with Mexico and her "gifts".

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

‘Medellin’ is very similiar to the name of a Colombian family. Considering the quagmired War on Drugs, a curious coincidence.

‘A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways,’ we are told. About what part of ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’ are we being schizo, Mr. President?

[Vigilanteman]

Excellent reply, despite the asinine post #18.

If treaties trumped the U.S. Constitution, then they would require a constitutional convention or ratification by 3/4th of all state legislatures.

Some nimrods forget that Amendment 10 is still part of the U.S. Constitution.

[texaslil]

He hasn’t lost it, he never had it. Like those who voted for clinton, we got sold a bill of goods. bush isn’t even a Texan. His smarmy family raced to Texas to take advantage of the oil boom. I voted for him three times, but this guy isn’t a MAN. He’s a self serving creep like the rest of them.

Real men protect the children-—girls like these two. If these animals hadn’t had protection so far by the state of Texas, real TEXAS MEN would have killed them long ago.

[Wolfie]

Face it, you’d vote for him again if he was the Pubbie candidate.

[devolve]

[television is just wrong]

we all voted for this man because of the alternative choices.
picking the worst of two evils is not easy choices.

[Jabba the Nutt]

I get the fact that he is illegal from the fact that the media did not report that he was legal. You known, if the media report on crimes committed by "youths", you can know that the perps are not white. The American news media has to be read, like the Russians used to read Pravda. The truth is to be found is what they do not say, not in what they do say.

Are you willing to take a bet on this?

[ContraryMary]

...Treaties are equal to the U.S. Constitution under our system of government.

LOL! Where is that written?

[ears_to_hear]

This is a president that makes his own laws and suddenly he wants to abide by some international law?

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Bush is looking more and more like an internationalist — a one worlder

Looking like? Try "always was" and "under orders".

[Cyropaedia]

Remember how Johnny Sutton said that he would not talk to the House Judiciary Committee with regards to how the Mexican Government leaned on the DoJ to prosecute those two BP agents...?

Something is not right. The folks down in Mexico City have something on Bush.

[Kimberly GG]

From the Link Posted:

WED 03/09/2005
Mexico cheers U.S. decision on Texas inmates

WASHINGTON - Mexico welcomed the Bush administration's decision to allow Mexican citizens on Texas' death row to have their sentences reviewed. The reception in the president's home state, in contrast, was varied. The development came in the Supreme Court case of Jose Medellin, one of five alleged gang members sentenced to die for the Houston killing of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña in 1993. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the Bush administration's decision intruded on the state's legal authority. But he did not immediately decide whether to appeal.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican and frequent Bush backer, said last week that "Texas is simply trying to enforce its laws; Medellin has been given access to an attorney, a right to a fair trial, and all of the appeals and habeas corpus rights our system affords." But on Tuesday the senator had no quarrel with the Bush decision, because the American president, not the international court, was passing judgment, Cornyn spokesman Don Stewart said Tuesday. The administration's call for new hearings in state or federal courts, depending on where the cases were originally tried, goes forward unless Texas decides to contest the order in court.

Richard Stoll, a Rice University political science professor, said Bush's decision showed a proper willingness to buck Texas Republicans now that he has broader responsibilities. "There is a certain amount of irony in the president siding against Texas in this case, but when he changed jobs he changed his perspective." he said.

Mexican officials cheered.

"It is very important that the Mexican government express its satisfaction and its recognition of this determination by the United States' executive power, which without a doubt will have an important effect on the cases of our compatriots," said Arturo Dager, legal representative to Mexico's foreign ministry."

THU 03/03/2005

Perry wants cases reviewed

"In the wake of Tuesday's ruling, Gov. Rick Perry has directed the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to review the 28 cases and recommend appropriate action. It is likely that many will receive life sentences, requiring that they serve 40 years in prison before becoming eligible for consideration for parole."..


Thu 06/29/2006

" High court axes foreigners' plea / Denial of suspects' claims of consular rights violations could affect Texas case

In a ruling that could have implications for a Houston death row case, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against foreign suspects who want to suppress statements they gave to police during interrogations when they were not informed of their right to contact consulate officials from their home countries. The court ruled 6-3 that Mexican Moises Sanchez-Llamas' and Honduran Mario Bustillo's rights under the Vienna Convention were not violated because the treaty's consulate-notification provision does not apply to searches or interrogations.

Those cases originated in Oregon and Virginia, respectively. But the court's ruling could affect a Texas death-penalty case as well. Mexican national Jose Ernesto Medellin raised the same issue of Vienna Convention violations in his appeals. Medellin was one of six defendants convicted in the 1993 rape and murder of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Peña, 16, in a northwest Houston park. "The court could have used Jose's case a long time ago to hand down the same ruling they handed down today," Medellin's attorney, Michael B. Charlton, said from his office in El Prado, N.M. "That pretty much ends Vienna Convention claims on confession claims but not on the other issues," he added. Medellin's case is under review by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after President Bush's edict last year for courts in Texas and other states to review his and 50 others involving foreign nationals who raised consular violation claims. But the court's decision does not relate to Bush's order.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts specified that Article 36 of the Vienna Convention "secures only a right of foreign nationals to have their consulate "informed" of their arrest or detention - not to have their consulate intervene, or to have law enforcement authorities cease their investigation pending any such notice or intervention." Under the convention, ratified by the United States in 1969, when a national of one country is detained by authorities in another country, authorities must notify the consular offices of the foreigner's home country when requested. Roberts also wrote that a detained foreign national, "like everyone else in our country, enjoys under our system the protections of the Due Process Clause." He set aside, however, the matter of whether police must advise defendants of their legal options. Roberts was careful to stipulate that the ruling "in no way disparages the importance of the Vienna Convention."

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that the decision runs afoul of the treaty's interpretation "not only with the treaty's language and history, but also with the (International Court of Justice's) interpretation of the same treaty provision." Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter joined in the dissent. Breyer wrote that the ruling may weaken respect abroad for the rights of foreign nationals and diminishes the treaty's proviso that foreign nationals are deserving of fair treatment throughout the world. A spokesman for the Texas Attorney General's Office, which is handling the Court of Criminal Appeals case involving Medellin, declined to comment about the potential impact of the court's ruling."....

[potlatch]

Very nice array devolve.

[stephenjohnbanker]

“WASHINGTON — President Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the state’s execution of a Mexican national for the brutal killing of two teenage girls”

Americans don’t count to President Boooooooooooosh!

[bill1952]

Touche` Kimberly.

[devolve]

.

Thanks potlatch

This sounds like the start of pardona muy