Posted on 05/06/2008 2:42:34 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
Medellin's lawyer hopes to stop it, saying client didn't get to talk to consulate
A Houston man who was convicted of capital murder 14 years ago for the gang rapes and slayings of two teenage girls received a death date Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for his and other killers' executions.
Jose Medellin, 33, is set to die by injection on Aug. 5 for the 1993 murders of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Peña, 16.
The girls were beaten, raped and killed after they happened upon a drunken midnight gang initiation rite in T.C. Jester Park in northwest Houston.
State District Judge Caprice Cosper set the date in a hearing Monday. Medellin was convicted and sentenced in 1994.
"I'm ready for this to be over," said Adolph Peña, Elizabeth's father."I know it takes a long time, but how much time do you need?"
However, Medellin's attorney, Sandra Babcock, said she expected to stop the execution, based on concerns about international justice agreements between the United States and other nations.
She said she will ask congressional leaders to put pressure on the government to adhere to the agreements, which include notifying the consulates of foreign nationals who are arrested. She said Medellin, who was born in Mexico but lived most of his life in Houston, was not given the opportunity to notify his consulate.
Mexico sued U.S.
A legal struggle over international law had kept Medellin's case on appeal to the Supreme Court. Mexico, which opposes the death penalty, sued the United States in 2003 in the International Court of Justice in The Hague on behalf of about 50 Mexican citizens, including Medellin, on death rows in the United States.
The Mexican government said U.S. officials violated the 1963 Vienna Convention when they failed to allow the citizens of another country access to its representatives after arrest. The World Court agreed and said the inmates deserved new hearings.
President Bush had said Texas should reconsider the Medellin case and others based on the Vienna Convention.
But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in March that a memo by Bush instructing states to comply with the international court was not sufficient to require states to act.
A few days after he wrote the memo, Bush withdrew the United States from the part of an international treaty that gives the International Court of Justice final say in international disputes.
Supreme Court ruling
The Supreme Court removed another impediment to the execution of Medellin and others when it ruled in April on a Kentucky case that lethal injection is not cruel and unusual punishment.
Kentucky uses the same lethal three-drug cocktail that is used in 35 other states, including Texas. Defense attorneys argued that it violated inmates' constitutional rights.
Executions were halted in September when the high court agreed to hear the Kentucky case.
Five other reputed gang members were convicted in connection with the Ertman and Peña slayings.
Derrick Sean O'Brien was executed in 2006. Peter Anthony Cantu is on death row for the killings, but his execution date has not been set.
Raul Villarreal and Efrain Perez were sentenced to death but had their sentences commuted to life in prison in 2005 after the U.S. Supreme Court determined that it was cruel to execute those who were juveniles.
They were months away from turning 18 when the killings occurred.
Venacio Medellin, Jose Medellin's brother who was 14 at the time of the crime, testified against the others and is serving a 40-year sentence
dale.lezon@chron.com
I have followed this case for a long time. I will be toasting his death August 5th. Not that I know him or that he killed anyone I know, but that American justice will be meted out on this guy who almost slipped out of it due to pleas to the UN by Mexico at the very last minute.
See ‘domestic terrorist’. It’s a step that way. Unfortunately they can unfairly label someone that.
ping
bump
Screw that. If "other nations'" people commit capital crimes on our soil, they will face the justice of our soil.
If you don't want 'em executed, then keep them at home in your own nation where they belong.
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