Thread: Bush Try To Stop Execution Illegal Mex Killer In TX

Bush tries to halt execution of convicted killer in Texas


Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday October 8, 2007
The Guardian


President George Bush, who signed the death warrant for 152 prisoners as governor of Texas, this week faces a rare challenge from his home state against his efforts to block the execution of a convicted killer from Mexico.
The case of Jose Ernesto Medellin, to go before the supreme court on Wednesday, examines whether the president has the power to set aside a state law that conflicts with an international treaty.

It puts Mr Bush in the unusual position of arguing against the death penalty and against the very same Texans who helped put him in the White House. Even more unusually, it puts Mr Bush on the same side of the dispute as the International Court of Justice in The Hague.


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But the confrontation is more likely to turn on the dividing line between state and presidential powers than on the legitimacy of the death penalty. The supreme court is to deal more directly with the death penalty next January when it hears arguments against the use of lethal injection, the main method of execution in the US.
Wednesday's case began with a death row appeal from Medellin, a gang member from Houston who was just 18 when he raped and strangled to death two teenage girls in 1993. After a decade on death row, in 2004 the Mexican government obtained a ruling from the International Court of Justice on Mr Medellin's behalf that state police had violated his right to access to consular officials from Mexico. Mr Medellin, who was born in Mexico, has lived in the US since he was nine years old, although he was never a legal resident.

The judgment found that the Texas authorities failed to tell Mr Medellin and 50 other death row inmates from Mexico of their rights under the Vienna Convention to seek advice from the Mexican consulate, or to inform consular officials about their cases.

Mr Bush issued a memorandum two months later that the US courts would implement the ICJ ruling. The Bush administration is expected to argue that the president's executive power over treaty provisions outranks state laws.

Although the administration notes that it does not agree with the ICJ's interpretation of the Vienna Convention, it says it will abide by the court's decision for the sake of protecting US interests abroad.

However, Texas argues that Mr Bush's memo on the death penalty case would set a dangerous precedent for presidential power. The state argues that Mr Bush's action disregards earlier verdicts by an appeals court and the supreme court that Mr Medellin was not entitled to invoke his rights as a Mexican citizen because he had not raised the issue at his original trial.

In a speech to a conservative legal group in Washington, Ted Cruz, the state's solicitor general and a key adviser on Mr Bush's 2000 election campaign, accused the president of overstepping his authority. "This president's exercise of this power is egregiously beyond the bounds of presidential authority," he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international ... %2C00.html

That is because Mexico does not have the death penalty. You can't kill an illegal. GEEZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!

If you read this : http://www.murdervictims.com/Voices/jeneliz.html

You will be truly disgusted with what has transpired in this case!!! And for BOOSH ( saw someone else use that, and just LOVED it!) to stick his nose in is reprehensible!

Impeach President Cheney... and his little dummy too![/url]

The next insult to the American people and way of life is when we'll read about bush's pardon for all the illegal child molesters/rapists/murderers. After all, their just doing the hard jobs that most Americans refuse to do!!!

Third world.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 95637.html
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WASHINGTON — When Jose Medellin was arrested in 1993, he signed a confession detailing how he and five fellow gang members had raped and sodomized two Houston teenagers before strangling them with their shoe laces. He bragged that he had pocketed one girl's Mickey Mouse watch as a souvenir.

Medellin and four others eventually were convicted of capital murder and sent to Texas' death row. A juvenile court sentenced Medellin's younger brother, who was 14 at the time, to 40 years in prison.

This week, Medellin's case makes its second trip to the Supreme Court. The issue now is not his confession to the murders of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña, but something else he said during his arrest: He informed the police that he is a Mexican citizen. But officers didn't inform him of his right to contact the Mexican Consulate for legal assistance.

That mistake, a violation of a 1963 treaty known as the Vienna Convention, has since sparked an international court battle, bruised relations between the United States and its southern neighbor and ultimately will force the high court to answer a rather large constitutional question:

What authority, if any, does President Bush have to order courts in the state of Texas to do anything about it?

"We find ourselves in an unusual position. Texas is not regularly litigating against the United States," said Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz. "But sadly enough, the United States will appear alongside Medellin at the argument."

Medellin v. Texas, which will be argued on Wednesday and decided by next summer, could determine the fate of Medellin and 50 other Mexican killers on death rows in the United States, including more than a dozen in Texas. They were not informed of their right under the treaty to contact their countrymen when they were arrested.

The case also could affect the treatment of an estimated 6,000 U.S. citizens accused of crimes each year while traveling or living abroad. They, too, are protected by the treaty.

More significantly to most Americans, though, the justices are expected to produce a major ruling clarifying what powers reside with the president, Congress and courts, what powers belong to the federal government versus the states, and what the relationship is between international and domestic law.


A presidential order
The Bush administration became involved in the Medellin case in 2003 when Mexico sued the U.S. over the consular issue in the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The so-called "World Court" is the United Nations' top court for resolving international disputes.

The court ruled in Mexico's favor in late 2004 and ordered the United States to reconsider the Mexican inmates' murder convictions and death sentences. In February 2005, Bush announced that while he disagreed with the World Court's decision, the U.S. would comply, and he declared how: He would order courts in Texas and elsewhere to review the cases.

A few days later, however, the president withdrew the United States from the part of the Vienna Convention that gives the World Court final say in international disputes.

The Supreme Court, which had agreed to hear Medellin's case, dismissed it later in 2005 to allow the case to play out in Texas. Last November, the all-Republican Texas Court of Criminal Appeals balked at the Republican president's order, saying Bush had overstepped his authority.

The Texas court said the judicial branch, not the White House, should decide how to resolve the Mexican cases. It also said Medellin wasn't entitled to a new hearing because he failed to complain at his original trial about any violation of his consular rights and had therefore waived them.

Medellin appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court, which announced last May that it would hear his case. His lawyer, Donald Donovan of New York, will argue this week that Bush was correct when he took action to comply with the World Court's decision.

In addition, Donovan said that, independent of Bush's order, the Texas court has its own obligation under the U.S. Constitution to do its part to abide by international treaties.

The Bush administration, now siding with Medellin and Mexico, will try to help Donovan's team convince the justices that the Texas court is undermining the president's efforts to conduct foreign policy.


Setting a precedent?
Cruz, who will argue the case for Texas, called Bush's unprecedented attempt to issue orders to the judicial branch — and the state courts in particular — "breathtaking."

"It is emphatically not the province of the president to say what the law is," he said. "If this president's assertion of authority is upheld in this case, it opens the door for enormous mischief from presidents of either party. What might these presidents be inclined to do if they had the power to flick state laws off the books?"

Meanwhile, Randy and Sandra Ertman, the parents of one of Medellin's victims, also have weighed in. In a court brief filed on their behalf by the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, the Ertmans argue that their 14-year-old daughter's rights, and the rights of other victims, will be given short shrift if the justices further delay the "already long-overdue execution of this well-deserved sentence."

"This case has produced much lofty discussion about international law and the separation of powers. We must not forget, though, that this case is about a real crime against real people," they wrote. "Enough is enough."

By the way, Glenn Beck talked about this on TV at 22 minutes after the hour with houston talk show host and state senator dan patrick..
he said there would be more discussion on the radio and TV show on Tuesday

i lived in houston when this happened

Bush goes out of his way to try to save a Mexican illegal alien murdering scumbag. But yet he doesn't lift a finger to help two dedicated American hero Border Patrol agents wrongfully convicted of harming a multiple drug smuggling illegal alien Mexican thug. Gee, go figure.

I hope he fries! If that had been my daughter, that ASSH_ _ _ would have hoped the police got to him before I did! You hurt my babies and I will get you one way or the other if it takes the rest of my life!

The Bush administration, now siding with Medellin and Mexico, will try to help Donovan's team convince the justices that the Texas court is undermining the president's efforts to conduct foreign policy.

So what else is new? That traitorous illegal alien loving Bush always sides with Mexico over Americans, whether they be BP agents or ordinary citizens. And why does he all of a sudden agree with the wishes of the international community? He sure as hell didn't give a crap what they thought when nearly the whole world told him not to invade Iraq.

So what kind of message does this send to the tens of thousands of Mexican illegal alien murderers, gang bangers, rapists and child molesters roaming free in our country thanks to him? It pretty much tells them loud and clear they can freely commit the most heinous crimes against innocent American men, women and children and the worst that will happen to them is they get free room and board for life, complete with three square meals a day, cable TV and weightlifting. Heck, for some of these scumbags that would probably be a step up from their regular living conditions.