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| 2008-08-06 | ||
| HUNTSVILLE, Texas - With the parents of his victims watching a few feet away, a Mexican-born condemned killer apologized before he was executed for his part in a horrific attack on two teenage girls 15 years ago. "I'm sorry my actions caused you pain," Jose Medellin told the teens' parents late Tuesday. "I hope this brings you the closure that you seek." Nine minutes later, Medellin was pronounced dead. His execution, the fifth this year in Texas, was delayed for about four hours while the U.S. Supreme Court weighed his appeal. "It's been a long night," Randy Ertman, whose daughter was killed by Medellin and five other gang members, said after watching the 33-year-old man receive lethal injection. The appeal to the nation's highest court focused on whether Medellin was denied treaty-guaranteed help from the Mexican consulate when he was arrested. The court rejected his request for a reprieve, with the majority opinion noting that the Justice Department had not sought the court's intervention. "Its silence is no surprise," the court said, adding that prosecutors never wavered from their position that Medellin "was not prejudiced by his lack of consular access." Four justices dissented.
Texas authorities argued Medellin, who came to the United States when he was 3 and grew up in Houston, never sought Mexican consular protections until four years after he was arrested. By then, he already had been tried for capital murder, convicted and condemned. Medellin was the first to die among the cases cited by the international court, also known as the World Court. "It's important to recall this is a case not just about one Mexican national on death row in Texas," one of his lawyers, Sandra Babcock, said after watching him die. "It's also about ordinary Americans who count on the protection of the consulate when they travel abroad to strange lands. It's about the reputation of the United States as a nation that adheres to the rule of law." President Bush asked states to review the cases, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year neither the president nor the international court could force Texas to wait. Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said it sent a note of protest to the State Department about Medellin's case. The statement said officials "were concerned for the precedent that (the execution) may create for the rights of Mexican nationals who may be detained in that country." In their appeal, Medellin's lawyers warned his execution could endanger Americans abroad if they get into legal trouble and said Congress or the Texas Legislature should be given a chance to pass a law setting up procedures for new hearings before he was executed. A bill to implement the international court's ruling wasn't introduced in Congress until last month. The Texas Legislature doesn't meet until January. "State and federal courts -- on three separate occasions -- have already satisfied the World Court's suggestion that American courts examine whether Medellin suffered actual legal harm when authorities did not inform him about certain rights under the Vienna Convention," said Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for the Texas Attorney General's Office. "On all three occasions, state and federal courts concluded that Medellin suffered no legal harm."
Medellin, who was 18 at the time, was one of five to get the death penalty for the girls' deaths. One companion, Derrick O'Brien, was executed two years ago. Another, Peter Cantu, described as the ringleader of the group, is awaiting execution but a date has not been set. "Looking forward every day to that," said Adolfo Pena, Elizabeth's father. Two others, Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal, had their death sentences commuted to life in prison when the Supreme Court barred executions for those who were 17 at the time of their crimes. The sixth person convicted, Medellin's brother, Vernancio, was 14 at the time and is serving a 40-year prison term. At least six other Mexican nationals have been executed in Texas since 1982, when the state resumed carrying out capital punishment. | ||
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #9 The Mexican government deports illegals they find, pronto! No appeal, no long checklist of do's and don'ts. If Americans murdered, raped, and assaulted Mexican citizens in their country proportionately in a manner their citizen do to ours, you'd be sure the citizenry would replace the government that didn't execute them. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-08-06 21:11 |
| #8 Good for Texas! As for Mex and the World Court, this is a big poke in the eye for both of them, and a well-deserved one at that. |
| Posted by: Hupiling the Galactic Hero1106 2008-08-06 18:55 |
| #7 And what would the Mexican consulate have told him that his lawyer wouldn't have? "Don't say anything; it can be used against you in court". Oh, wait, that is part of the standard Miranda warning in the US. |
| Posted by: Rambler in California 2008-08-06 14:16 |
| #6 think he identified himself as an illegal? Me neither. Roast in hell, pendejo |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-08-06 13:01 |
| #5 Isn't that your attorney's job to inform you of the various international treaties that apply to your case? I don't think the local police are trained in international treaty law. I have some big problems with some of the things police are doing these days, but this is beyond their training and expertise. They can't give legal advice, it's against the law. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-08-06 12:57 |
| #4 And from the boo-hoo curcuit... In Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where Medellin was born, a small group of his relatives condemned the execution."This is another murder because no one has the right to take someone else's life, only God," said Medellin's cousin Reyna Armendariz. Guess your cousin didn't get that memo, huh? A large black bow and a banner that read "No to the death penalty ... may God forgive you," hung from an iron fence in the front of the house where Medellin lived before moving to the United States at the age of 3. Ah, he "moved" here... Armendariz said the family hopes Medellin's body would be return to Mexico."He signed a paper saying he wanted his remains to go to a friend. Who knows if they will bring him here," Armendariz said sobbing. Send him back in a trash truck. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-08-06 11:45 |
| #3 Thanks to the Great State of Texas. Told Bush and the World Court to shove it. Texans will never take shit off Mexico until they are over run by illegals and voted out of house and home. After he has shit on the state for years, I wonder how GW has the balls to go back. I've read that even the people he grew up around in Midland are pissed that he's allowed and encouraged West Texas to be over run by Mexicans. In times past, they would have lynched Georgie right along side a whole passel of his new found friends and drove the remainder back across the border the next day. |
| Posted by: Woozle Elmeter 2700 2008-08-06 11:18 |
| #2 What, no commutation from Senor Bush? |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2008-08-06 11:03 |
| #1 Adios, muchacho! |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-08-06 09:21 |