Posted on 07/08/2011 1:01:47 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON — In a 5-to-4 decision that split along ideological lines, the Supreme Court on Thursday evening rebuffed a request from the Obama administration that it stay the execution of a Mexican citizen on death row in Texas. The inmate, Humberto Leal Garcia Jr., was executed about an hour later.
……On Thursday, in an unsigned majority opinion, the Supreme Court said that Congress had had plenty of time to act and that the court would not now “prohibit a state from carrying out a lawful judgment in light of unenacted legislation.”
“Our task,” the majority wrote, “is to rule on what the law is, not what it might eventually be.”
The majority also noted that “the United States studiously refuses to argue that Leal was prejudiced by the Vienna Convention violation,” suggesting that a fresh hearing would do Mr. Leal no good. He was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a 16-year-old girl.
“We decline,” the majority wrote, “to follow the United States’ suggestion of granting a stay to allow Leal to bring a claim based on hypothetical legislation when it cannot even bring itself to say that his attempt to overturn his conviction has any prospect of success.”
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in a dissent joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, wrote that the government’s request was modest, given that allowing the execution to proceed would, in the solicitor general’s words, “cause irreparable harm” to “foreign-policy interests of the highest order” and endanger Americans traveling abroad.
The court should defer to the executive branch’s assessment, Justice Breyer wrote, as “the Court has long recognized the president’s special constitutionally based authority in matters of foreign relations.”……..”In reaching its contrary conclusion,” Justice Breyer wrote, “the Court ignores the appeal of the president…
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
And "dream" in another way: He'd been here since he was 2. But for his "slip" with that young girl, he'd be eligible for an accelerated path to citizenship.
I wonder: Under the Dem Dream initiative for young illegals, would they retain special Mexican consular rights in addition to the U. S. citizenship rights they would acquire?
And not even then. IIRC, in Texas, the Governor can grant a temporary stay, but commuting the sentence falls to a special panel.
Hoooo-Fn-ray!!
Her name was Adria Sauceda, and she would be 33 years old now, if she had lived.
When I vote I see lots of judges I’m not familiar with. I will never vote for a female one. But if I know she is confirmed conservative then I will vote for her. But those are few and far between
BTW 57% of law school graduates are female so it will be getting worse. In my corrupt county the women dominate on the school board and county commission. They are corrupt, some are going to jail, and usually working in tandem with a husband who who is a lawyer lobbyist type with his own rackets in county government.
Thanks for clarifying that — I stand corrected. I should have made a more general statement about how state officials are the only ones who can issue pardons and commutations for state crimes.
Presidential power to grant pardons, which is enumerated in Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, is nearly unlimited and cannot be checked by any other branch of government.
Read more: Presidential Pardons — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/presidential-pardons.html#ixzz1RWW2Oq00
. . . and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
The guy who just got executed was never charged with "an offense against the United States" (i.e., a Federal crime).
This is why the language in the legal documents drawn up in a criminal proseucution is very specific. In this criminal case, the title of the court action was probably listed as: "The State of Texas v. Mexican Sh!t-Bag Invader" or something along those lines. The Federal government was not a party to the case as either the plaintiff, the defendant or the court of jurisdiction, so it has no standing to interfere in the process unless it assumes one or more of those three roles by entering into its own legal action against the State of Texas in a Federal court.
Do they want law enforcement to check on legal status or not?
Last I checked Texas,(as much as some Texans don’t like it) is part of the United States.
Believe it or not, there are no Federal laws against murder except in very limited circumstances.
Judging from threads past, they would.
I hope that is not coming back.
LOL at ME!
I mean’t “wouldn’t”.
And, I hope their “arguments” for illegals aren’t coming back. ;o)
What the hell does the dissenting opinion have to do with anything at all related to Constitutional interpretation?
Their ‘opinion’ is nothing more than personal and political bias, conjecture and pandering. There’s not even a mention of the law.
God help us. Just looking at Kagan makes me physically ill.
Hey, munchkin. Get with the scarecrow and yourself find a brain.
The "wizard" told the scarecrow all he needed was a degree from an institution of higher learning -- that a piece of paper was all the scarecrow needed to be seen as "having a brain."
???
Since when do these liberal activist scumbags think it's their job to worry about the nation's "foreign-policy interests"? Yikes...
Pray for America.
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