Thread: BREAKING: US Supreme Court DENIES Reprieve!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080806/...as_execution_4

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - The U.S. Supreme Court has denied Mexican-born condemned prisoner Jose Medellin's request for a reprieve.
ADVERTISEMENT

The court denied the request late Tuesday, more than three hours after Medellin's execution was to take place. The death warrant remains in effect until midnight CDT.

The 33-year-old Medellin claims he was denied treaty-guaranteed help from the Mexican consulate when he was arrested for the rape and murders of two Houston teenage girls 15 years ago.

YEESSSS !!!

Get on With It!!!

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/


Mexican National Set to Die
Last Edited: Tuesday, 05 Aug 2008, 9:34 PM CDT <<< NOTE THE TIME
Created: Tuesday, 05 Aug 2008, 1:42 PM CDT

HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- The U.S. Supreme Court has denied Mexican-born condemned prisoner Jose Medellin's request for a reprieve.

The court denied the request late Tuesday, more than three hours after Medellin's execution was set to take place. The death warrant remained in effect until midnight CDT.

The scheduled execution of Medellin in Texas was on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considers an appeal in his case. The death warrant, which allowed the lethal injection to be carried out after 6 p.m. CDT, remains in effect until midnight.

The Mexican-born Medellin, 33, faced lethal injection in a case that has drawn international attention after he raised arguments he wasn't allowed to consult the Mexican consulate for legal help after he was arrested for the horrific slayings of 16-year-old Elizabeth Pena and her friend, 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman.

Medellin was one of six members of a street gang drinking after initiating a new member. They intercepted the two girls who were taking a shortcut home across a railroad bridge in Houston, attacking them for an hour before strangling them and letting their bodies decompose in a field. The girls' remains were found four days later.

Late Monday, Medellin was moved from death row at a prison outside Livingston in East Texas to the Huntsville Unit, about 45 miles to the west, where he would be the fifth Texas inmate executed this year and the first of two scheduled to die this week. His transfer came after he spent time Monday visiting with his parents and his grandmother and after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected requests for clemency and a reprieve.

"The board's action is against the interests of the nation and risks the safety of thousands of American traveling and living abroad," Donald Donovan, one of Medellin's lawyers, said of the parole board decisions. "We must now rely on the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent Texas from breaking a commitment made by the president and Senate on behalf of the country as a whole."

The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, has said Medellin and some 50 other Mexicans on death rows around the nation should have new hearings in U.S. courts to determine whether a 1963 treaty was violated during their arrests. Medellin is the first among them set to die. His attorneys contend he was denied the protections of the Vienna Convention, which calls for people arrested to have access to their home country's consular officials.

President Bush has asked states to review the cases, but the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year neither the president nor the international court can force Texas to wait. Medellin's supporters say either Congress or the Texas Legislature should be given a chance to pass a law setting up procedures for new hearings before he should be executed.

Gov. Rick Perry, the Texas courts and the state attorney general have said the execution should be carried out. The Texas Attorney General's Office urged the Supreme Court to reject the appeals, saying the execution "fully complies with international law" and noting that the justices already have ruled that the International Court of Justice's decisions are not U.S. law and not binding on American courts.

Medellin's lawyers Monday asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a reprieve and for permission to file new appeals on his behalf. They also awaited word from the Supreme Court, which they asked Friday to stop the execution until legislation can be passed to formalize the case reviews.

Testimony at his murder trial showed Medellin was the first of the gang to start the attack, grabbing Pena, who then cried out for help from her friend.

By the time it ended an hour later, Medellin, then 18, and five fellow gang members had raped the girls and forced them to perform sex acts before beating and then strangling them with a belt and shoelaces. Medellin subsequently boasted to friends about having "virgin's blood" on his underpants.

Medellin contends he never was advised by prosecutors or police of his right as a detained foreign national to seek consular assistance as required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, depriving him of legal assistance that Mexico could have provided.

"That's a last-stop measure they're trying to use," Mark Vinson, a now-retired former Harris County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Medellin, said Monday. "Mr. Medellin raised that issue before the trial. In pre-trial he didn't raise the issue. And he didn't raise the issue during the trial.

Hip Hip Hurray!!!
Three cheers for Texas!!!!!

Remember these are the kinds of people that Feinstein, Pelosi, and Newsom are shielding. I pray the families will finally have an end to this. I know there is one more guy but we'll see.

"An Eye for an Eye" "a Life for Two Innocent girls Lives" he should have been executed many years ago

Originally Posted by AirborneSapper7

"An Eye for an Eye" "a Life for Two Innocent girls Lives" he should have been executed many years ago

yeah one of the six has already been executed, and dang it,. if his name didnt sound like it was an american name and not a hispanic name. hmmmm

Originally Posted by jamesw62

Originally Posted by AirborneSapper7

"An Eye for an Eye" "a Life for Two Innocent girls Lives" he should have been executed many years ago

yeah one of the six has already been executed, and dang it,. if his name didnt sound like it was an american name and not a hispanic name. hmmmm

I don't care if it is an American or illegal or both. They deserve this.

Amazing that the chief justice was appointed by Bush, and it seems the court has gone against his ideas of right and wrong many times.
And lethal injection is better than electrocution. It saves energy.