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 News from Around the Americas | October 2007 
Bush, Texas at Odds Over Death Row Case
 Associated Press
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| | Jose Ernesto Medellin (Texas Department of Criminal Justice/AP) |
Washington — A Mexican national on death row in Texas is counting on the unlikely intervention of President Bush to save him from execution.
Jose Ernesto Medellin and the U.S. government are asking the Supreme Court to order Texas to abide by an international court ruling 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.
The case mixes Bush administration claims of executive power with the role of international law in state court proceedings. It has produced unusual alliances that cross ideological lines.
Texas courts have said the international court ruling has no weight in Texas and that Bush has no power to order its enforcement.
Medellin was arrested a few days after the killings of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, in June 1993. 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 under the 1963 treaty.
Medellin, who speaks, reads and writes English, 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.
Texas acknowledges that Medellin was not told he could ask for help from Mexican diplomats, but argues that he forfeited the right because he never raised the issue at trial or sentencing. In any case, the state argues, the diplomats' intercession would not have made any difference in the outcome of the case.
At this point, 14 years after the killings, the state says neither the international court nor Bush has any say in Medellin's case.
State and federal courts rejected Medellin's claim when he raised it on appeal.
Then, in 2003, Mexico 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. who also had been denied access to their country's diplomats following their arrests.
Mexico has no death penalty. Mexico and other opponents of capital punishment have sought to use the court, also known as the World Court, to fight for foreigners facing execution in the U.S.
The international court ruled for Mexico in 2004, saying the sentences and convictions should be reviewed by U.S. courts. Bush ordered state courts to give the prisoners new state court hearings.
Bush has since withdrawn the United States from the international agreement that allows the world court to have the final say when citizens claim they were illegally denied access to their diplomats when they are jailed abroad.
The case is Medellin v. Texas, 06-984. |
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