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Mexican's execution could spell doom for three condemned in Hidalgo County
McAllen Texas Monitor ^ | August 9, 2008 | Jeremy Roebuck

Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2008 12:15:26 PM by Zakeet

EDINBURG, TEXAS -- Adelmina Rios has waited 19 long years for her brother's killer to be put to death.

Now, after a trial, appeals and an international incident that threatened to delay the process for years, Hector Torres Garcia may be one step closer to execution. Torres, 47, injured Rios and fatally shot her brother in 1989 during a convenience store robbery north of Edinburg. An Hidalgo County jury imposed the death penalty on Torres a year later.

But Mexico has challenged his sentence and that of more than 50 fellow Mexican nationals currently on death row in the United States - going so far as to obtain an order earlier this year from the International Court of Justice to delay their executions.

Last week, Texas defied the world community by putting to death one of the men caught up in the ongoing dispute. The move suggests a similar fate for Torres and 13 other Mexican citizens now housed on the state's death row.

Rios, for one, approves of that decision. "If they do something that terrible to someone else," she said, "they deserve the same."

ONGOING DISPUTE

In 2004, the United Nation's highest court ruled that Torres and his fellow condemned citizens should get new hearings in U.S. courts.

Local authorities failed to notify the Mexican nationals they could contact their consulates upon their arrests, a right afforded them by a 1963 treaty known as the Vienna Convention, the world court found.

Despite the Bush administration's support of the court's order, Texas has fought the ruling for years.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state's decision in March, saying the 1963 treaty had never been ratified by Congress and was therefore not binding on individual states.

The specific case that came before the justices of the U.S. high court involved Jose Ernesto MedellÃ*n, a Houston gang member who was executed Tuesday for the murders of two teenage girls. But its precedent extends to dozens of cases, including those of three men sentenced to die for crimes committed in Hidalgo County.

They include:

>> Torres.

>> Roberto Moreno Ramos, now 53, who confessed to clubbing his wife and two children over the head with a hammer before burying them under the floor of their Progreso home.

>> Rubén RamÃ*rez Cárdenas, now 37, who broke into an Edinburg teenager's home in 1997 and bound, kidnapped and raped her before dumping her body in a nearby canal.

Both Moreno and Ramirez have exhausted their regular appeals and now seem poised for execution in the wake of MedellÃ*n's death. Torres continues to petition appeals courts to overturn his case, said Ted Hake, chief of the appellate division of the Hidalgo County district attorney's office.

SHIFTING ATTITUDES

Despite MedellÃ*n's execution last week, Mexico has pledged to continue efforts to challenge death sentences for its citizens.

"(MedellÃ*n) was executed ... in clear contempt of the International Court of Justice order," the nation's foreign affairs minister, Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, said in a written statement issued Tuesday. "The Ministry of Foreign Relations reiterates its commitment with the consular protection of Mexican nationals abroad."

Traditionally, the nation has opposed the death penalty and still refuses to extradite suspected criminals wanted for capital crimes. But there are signs that such attitudes could be shifting in the nation's public opinion.

While the 1997 execution of Mexican Irineo Tristan Montoya sparked angry demonstrations in Matamoros and Reynosa, MedellÃ*n's death Tuesday met with relatively little fanfare on the streets.

Filled with an ever-increasing number of stories about violent deaths and kidnappings related to the drug trade, most Mexican newspapers buried stories on MedellÃ*n's execution in Wednesday's editions.

And earlier this week a top congressional leader called for capital punishment to be instituted in the country.

‘HE DESERVES TO DIE'

For Rios, though, her brush with death 19 years ago is all that matters in forming her opinion. Citizenship should play no part in delivering justice, she said.

Then 17 and a convenience store attendant, she asked her 14-year-old brother, Eduardo, to stay behind on a balmy summer night and take her home when her shift ended.

As she later watched him die after being shot by Torres and three accomplices, she says her mind was made up.

"(Torres) deserves to die," she said. "He intended to kill us both, and he deserves the same."



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TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; News/Current Events; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: aliens; capitalpunishment; crimaliens; deathrow; hangemhigh; illegalaliens; immigrantlist; mexico; wot
Mexicans favor the death penalty for persons such as:


Hector Torres Garcia.


Roberto Moreno Ramoz.


Rubin Ramirez Cardenas.


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2059479/posts

"(MedellÃ*n) was executed ... in clear contempt of the International Court of Justice order," the nation's foreign affairs minister, Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, said in a written statement issued Tuesday. "The Ministry of Foreign Relations reiterates its commitment with the consular protection of Mexican nationals abroad."

Excuse me buddy, but as usual you don't get it. We are as SOVEREIGN nation. We make our laws not to suit you. OH and by-the-way, Medellin murdered those two girls "in clear contempt of our right to LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS." I couldn't care less what you think.

These mexicans on death row are not innocent men. In the case of Medellin, he bragged about killing those little girls. As for the others? As often happens with their kind, they turned on each other to save themselves.

These soon to be executed scum all left witnesses who testified they saw them murdering innocent people.

Mexico would rather protect known murderers than let justice prevail? What would new trials discover? Nothing! The results would be the same.

If Mexico had the death penalty, they wouldn't be such a cesspool that they are now. Therefore, mexico can KMA!