Officer Kenneth Collins, 33, Phoenix Police Department
Murdered May 27, 1988
Officer Collins was shot and killed in an off duty incident as he attempted to thwart a robbery while working as a security guard at Valley National Bank in Phoenix, Arizona. Ismael Conde was arrested, convicted and sentenced to 280 years in prison.
Co-defendant, Rudy Romero fled to Mexico where he remained at large for 12 years before being wounded in a shootout with police. He was then arrested on the outstanding murder warrant. Mexico refused to extradite unless Texas waived the death penalty. The paperwork was begun but before the extradition request was approved, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that any life sentence was unconstitutional and the SRE refused to extradite unless additional assurances of a determinate term were given.
On November 1, 2002, thirteen years after the murder of Officer Collins, Romero was extradited from Mexico. He has since been convicted and sentenced to 98 years in prison. Both the death penalty and life sentences had to be waived in order to secure extradition. Romero is eligible for parole.
Officer Lawrence Cadena, 43, Dallas Police Department
Murdered December 13, 1988 Officer Cadena was shot eight times at close range during an undercover drug sting operation. After the shooting a co-defendant reached over Cadena’s body and ripped open his shirt and pants, presumably looking for the drug money. Officer Cadena’s murder was memorialized in the 1990 TV movie "In the Line of Duty".
The shooter, Javier Suarez Medina was a Mexican national who had lived in the United States since he was three years old. In May of 1989, Medina was convicted and sentenced to death. On August 15, 2002, after 13 years on death row, Medina was executed. Among his last words spoken was the phrase "Viva Mexico". Medina was given a hero’s sendoff at his funeral in Mexico which was attended by 6,000 people.
The Mexican government actively fought the conviction and proposed execution arguing that Medina had not been advised of his rights under the Vienna Convention – an issue Medina raised for the first time one week before his execution. Mexican President Vicente Fox canceled a planned trip to meet with President Bush in Crawford, Texas in protest of the execution.
Officer Cadena, was an American citizen of Mexican ancestry. In a letter to President Fox, Cadena’s son Lawrence Rudy Cadena, also a police officer complained "Why is Mexico, the country of my children, defending a man who killed their grandfather?" No one from the Mexican government has ever contacted the Cadena family.