Posted on 03/25/2008 9:43:10 AM PDT by indcons
This is very good news. Congrats to the state of Texas, which had to fight the open-borders lobby and the Bush administration all the way to the high court to prevent international law from superseding American sovereignty:
President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered a Texas court to grant a new hearing to a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.
In a case that mixes presidential power, international relations and the death penalty, the court sided with Texas 6-3.
Bush was in the unusual position of siding with death row prisoner Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican citizen whom police prevented from consulting with Mexican diplomats, as provided by international treaty.
An international court ruled in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row around the United States violated the 1963 Vienna Convention, which provides that people arrested abroad should have access to their home country’s consular officials. The International Court of Justice, also known as the world court, said the Mexican prisoners should have new court hearings to determine whether the violation affected their cases.
Bush, who oversaw 152 executions as Texas governor, disagreed with the decision. But he said it must be carried out by state courts because the United States had agreed to abide by the world court’s rulings in such cases. The administration argued that the president’s declaration is reason enough for Texas to grant Medellin a new hearing.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, disagreed. Roberts said the international court decision cannot be forced upon the states.
The president may not “establish binding rules of decision that pre-empt contrary state law,” Roberts said.
Andy McCarthy summed up the bottom line on this case last fall:
At bottom, the case is about the freedom of Texans to govern themselves, to put sadistic murderers to death if that is what they choose democratically to do, as long as they adhere to American constitutional procedures in carrying out that policy choice. Sure, it offends Mexicans, Europeans, international law professors, and a motley collection of jurists who see themselves as a supra-sovereign tribunal. But that is not a basis for the President to interfere.
The administration has made a great show of promoting democracy. Democracy, however, begins at home.
Don’t you forget it.
***
SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Deniston has more:
The Supreme Court, in a sweeping rejection of claims of power in the presidency, ruled 6-3 on Tuesday that the President does not have the authority to order states to relax their criminal procedures to obey a ruling of the World Court. The decision came in the case of Medellin v. Texas (06-984). Neither a World Court decision requiring U.S. states to provide new review of criminal cases involving foreign nationals, nor a memo by President Bush seeking to enforce the World Court ruling, preempts state law restrictions on challenges to convictions, the Court said in a ruling written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
The decision, aside from its rebuff of presidential power, also treats the World Court ruling itself as not binding on U.S. states, when it contradicts those states’ criminal procedure rules. The international treaty at issue in this dispute — the Vienna Convention that gives foreign nationals accused of crime a right to meet with diplomats from their home country — is not enforceable as a matter of U.S. law, the Roberts opinion said. And the World Court ruling seeking to implement that treaty inside the U.S. is also not binding, and does not gain added legal effect merely because the President sought to tell the states to abide by the decision, the Court added.
The ruling also is a defeat for 51 Mexican nationals who won a World Court decision in 2004, finding that U.S. states had denied them their consular access rights and advising the U.S. government to take steps to enforce the ruling. In the specific case, Mexican national Jose Ernesto Medellin, sought to rely on both the World Court decision and the Bush memo to reopen his case, claiming that he was never given access to any Mexican diplomat while his case was going through Texas state courts.
The Bush Administration did not agree with the World Court ruling, and, in fact, withdrew from the international protocol that gave the World Court the authority to enforce the Vienna Convention. Even so, Bush issued a memo in February 2005, agreeing that the U.S. would seek to obey the World Court, and he told the states involve to “give effect” to that tribunal’s decision. The case thus came to the Court as a major test of presidential authority, in seeking to enforce treaty obligations, to override contradictory state criminal procedure rules. In that test, the presidency clearly lost.
The opinion will be posted here. Transcript of the oral arguments from last fall is here.
Way to go, Chief Justice John Roberts! There is no doubt how Justice Saundra "International Law Trumps the Constitution" Day O'Connor would have ruled.
It is a refreshing change to see this whole “international law” nonsense being thrown out by the bench. I really admire Justices Roberts and Alito - hope they are around for many, many years on the bench.
Whoo Hoo! The Constitution upheld!
No, it's an excellent example of truth. If the President did not force the issue up to the Supreme Court now, a President Obama or Clinton (or any future president), would simply reinstate GWB's withdrawal from the world court protocol.
In Texas, he has a friend and ally in Gov. Perry. Texas brings the suit, the Bush administration argues the other side so that all sides are heard, and the Court rules for Texas. Precedent established. Good case law established. An obstacle put in the way of the presidency as regards making the U.S. subservient to the international Left's world government wet dream.
That is the truth. That is the outcome of this case. That happened thanks to a series of actions taken by President Bush.
This case played out exactly as I described, your use of emotional accusations such as "love" and "twist" notwithstanding.
Evidently.
Yeah, I’m the one reacting with his emotions rather than his brain... right... Have you read the entire opinion? Have you been following this case for months? Your silly conspiracy theory strongly suggests that you have not. There is no use responding to someone who displays such ignorance. Good day.
Heh. Souter and Stevens again. Two of the worst appointments to the SCOTUS by Republican Presidents, Bush I and Ford.
WOO! Way to go Roberts!
Yes. And remember that the four liberals on the SCOTUS are also its oldest members. They'll be the ones to resign (or pass away) during the next presidential term. So at worst we're looking at extreme liberals replaced by extreme liberals. If McCain is president, we're looking at extreme liberals replaced by liberal Republicans who will occasionally vote with the conervatives. A gain, albeit a small one.
Jose Medellin confessed in 1993 to participating in the rape and murder of two Houston teenagers. Jennifer Ertman (16 years old) and Elizabeth Pena(15 years old) were sodomized and strangled with their shoe laces. Medellin bragged about keeping one girl's Mickey Mouse watch as a souvenir of the crime.
emphasis added. Justice is done in this case for these poor girls and their aggrieved families. Whatever punishment awaits this garbage is way too good.
I'm not sure, but I think the treaty would only apply to those that entered the host country "legally". If you enter without documentation proving country of origin, methinks you're screwed.
"I need to call my embassy."
"Which embassy?"
"The Mexican Embassy"
"You're Mexican?"
"Yes"
"Prove it. Show me your passport or birth certificate."
I read about the case....it was a horrific gang rape and murder. After the La Raza followers gang-raped the girls repeatedly and broke the girls’ teeth and ribs, they stomped on their necks and strangled them.
“If you enter without documentation proving country of origin, methinks you’re screwed.”
In any other country, yes. Not in the USA.
The truth is a conspiracy theory to you, huh? The actions of the State of Texas, the Bush administration, and the Supreme Court resulted in exactly the best outcome for the American people. That outcome did not result by accident, even though the blind hatred you and others have for President Bush means you'll never concede that he could do anything worthwhile for this country. But no matter, because U.S. sovereignty -- and more subtly, state sovereignty -- have been upheld anyway. On President Bush's watch, by a Supreme Court he has shaped, thanks to his home state of Texas, and his interest in and willingness to test the legal underpinnings of his own unilateral decision to withdraw from the world court protocol.
As for your "no use responding" comment, I think you doth protest too much.
Now we need to wait and see if Gov. Ricardo Perry will commute this killer’s death sentence!?
Don’t go confusing folks with the facts, Wolfstar...
Thanks.
On one hand, any defeat for the President is cause for Jubilation and Hallelujahs. On the other hand, the fact we can impose the death penalty on illegal alien perpetrators (aka "victims" in liberal parlance) is cause for Lamentations and Screeches.
It must be getting pretty stressful for the liberal mediawhores as more and more chaos beneficial to conservatism is happening every day.
Leni
Blast from the past....how soon we forget....
John McCain Praises Pro-illegal Protests April 2006
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/4/2/120003.shtml
Sen. John McCain is praising the recent wave of pro-illegal immigration demonstrations, saying that if the protesters hang tough they will succeed in forcing Congress to liberalize immigration laws.
“If such demonstrations continue, I think we will have a bill for the President to sign soon,” the Arizona Republican told a New York City gathering on Friday sponsored by the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform.
“The more debate, the more demonstrations, the more likely we will prevail,” McCain added, in quotes picked up by the New York Daily News.
“The people united will never be defeated!” other demonstrators chanted in Spanish. “We’re not going, but Bush can leave!” [snip]
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