Posted on 10/09/2007 9:46:25 AM PDT by uxbridge
To put it bluntly, Texas wants President Bush to get out of the way of the state's plan to execute a Mexican for the brutal killing of two teenage girls.
Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin in what has become a confusing test of presidential power that the 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.
Texas argues that neither the international court nor Bush has any say in Medellin's case.
Medellin was born in Mexico but spent much of his childhood in the United States. He was 18 in June 1993, when he and other members of the Black and Whites gang in Houston encountered two teenage girls on a railroad trestle.
The girls were gang-raped and strangled. Their bodies were found four days later.
Medellin was arrested a few days later. He was told he had a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present, but the police did not tell him that he could request assistance from the Mexican Consulate.
Medellin gave a written confession. He was convicted of murder in the course of a sexual assault, a capital offense in Texas. A judge sentenced him to death in October 1994.
Medellin did not raise the lack of assistance from Mexican diplomats during his trial or sentencing. When he did claim his rights had been violated, Texas and federal courts turned him down because he had not objected at his trial. Mexico later sued the United States in the International Court of Justice in The Hague on behalf of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row in the U.S.
Thanks for the clarification regarding the international courts.LOL. Anytime the UN is involved it is bad news. Now today is the day that supposedly our Supreme Court will rule.
Yea, right! Actually, free traders are beginning to be scarce.
shame on you...
Damn, this case is far more important than most of us realize. Beck is talking about it now and SCOTUS is hearing the case now.
Here is a more active thread on the topic. TomGuy is also following the court proceedings.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1909192/posts
I’ll check it out, Thx. I figured Rush may have taken an interest in this but guess not.
Yes, you would be tried under their laws, but you have a right to speak to a U.S. consulate, and they are supposed to inform you of that right.
I assure you that if you found out 50 americans were about to be put to death and were in mexican prisons, having never been granted consultation with the American embassy, people here would be up in arms.
Last time this came up, someone showed me that this was not a signed treaty, if so then probably the courts won’t allow enforcement of it.
If we had a signed and ratified treaty on the subject, the Constitution would give that treaty greater weight than state law. Treaties come just under the constitution itself.
I’ve been told though that the treaty under which this action would fall was never signed and ratified. I don’t have a reference.
If God wanted the guy dead, he'd just smote him. You think God is some whiny liberal who just cries when he doesn't get his way?
Two differences. First, he’s now President charged with enforcing FEDERAL law, and Second, the IJC issued a ruling in the matter.
Bush has said he doesn’t LIKE the ruling, and he doesn’t expect to abide by such rulings in the future. But for some reason unexplained, he feels obligated to attempt to enforce the ruling this time.
I’m not saying it makes it right, just saying there is a good reason why he is acting differently now than then.
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