Thread: Medellin set to die Tuesday for Ertman-Peña killings

Medellin set to die Tuesday for Ertman-Peña killings
Texas defies global outcry from U.N., Bush, other leaders in the controversial case
By ALLAN TURNER Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 4, 2008, 2:10AM
1118Comments 148Recommend

"Texas. It's like a whole other country."

Coined to promote tourism, that wry verbal wink at the state's mythic image has assumed a literal meaning as Texas finds itself in defiance of the United Nations, the Organization of American States and national leaders in its planned Tuesday execution of Mexican citizen Jose Medellin.

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court or Gov. Rick Perry acts in his favor, Medellin, 33, will die for the 1993 rape-strangulation of two teenage Houston girls, Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña.

Jennifer's father, Randy Ertman, dismissed international opposition to the execution.

"It's just a last-ditch effort to keep the scumbag breathing," Ertman said. "He never should have been breathing in the first place. I don't care, I really don't care what anyone thinks about this except Texas. I love Texas. Texas is in my blood."

At issue is Texas' refusal to hold a hearing to determine whether Medellin's defense was harmed by his inability to confer with Mexican consular officials at the time of his arrest. A suspect's right to talk with his consulate is guaranteed by the United Nations' Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the United States is a party.

Medellin insists he told both Houston police and Harris County officers that he is a Mexican citizen. Prosecutors say the killer never informed authorities of his nationality.

In a sworn statement, Medellin said he learned that the Mexican Consulate could possibly help him in 1997, four years after his arrest. He unsuccessfully petitioned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on the issue in 1998.

In 2004, the U.N.'s world court, responding to a Mexican lawsuit against the United States, ordered that hearings be held for Medellin and dozens of other inmates denied their consular rights. In 2005, President Bush called for the hearings to be held. Texas challenged the decision, and the Supreme Court determined that only Congress could mandate such action. In July, the world court ordered Medellin's execution be stayed.

Perry has argued Texas isn't bound by the decisions of international courts and that the state is determined to hold killers, regardless of their nationality, responsible for their crimes.

Texas has rebuffed not only the U.N. and Bush, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the judicial arm of the Organization of American States, which has demanded Medellin receive a new trial.

As politicians worried about the impact on Americans arrested in foreign countries should Texas fail to honor the world court order, prison officials moved Medellin to a special death row cell, where he will be held under constant video surveillance until he is driven to Huntsville's death house.


A tragic tale
The big city wept when little Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña died.

Students at Waltrip High School, Jennifer was 14, and Elizabeth had just turned 16. Their lives were filled with the things that occupy teenage girls. Friends recalled Elizabeth, who was beginning to dabble with makeup, as a "social butterfly." Jennifer tried her hand at basketball before concluding she wasn't cut out for athletics.

On June 24, 1993, the girls were at a party at a friend's apartment when they realized the lateness of the hour. Following the railroad tracks through T.C. Jester Park, they concluded, would shave 10 minutes off their trip to Elizabeth's Oak Forest home.

As the girls made their way past a thicket near White Oak Bayou, they stumbled onto the tail end of a drunken gang initiation. When they blundered into the group of youths, Medellin — 5 feet, 5 inches tall and weighing just 135 pounds — grabbed Elizabeth and flipped her to the ground. Jennifer, drawn by Elizabeth's scream, turned to help and was herself captured.

As the teens cried and struggled, six gang members took turns raping them.

Finally, gang leader Peter Cantu told Medellin, "We're going to have to kill them."

Gang members Derrick O'Brien and Raul Villarreal looped a belt around Jennifer's throat, pulling with such force that the belt broke. Cantu, Medellin and Efrain Perez strangled Elizabeth with a shoelace. Then they stomped on the girls' throats for good measure.

Four days later, police, acting on a tip from a gang member's brother, found the teens' bodies, badly decomposed in the summer heat.

The victims were identified through dental records.

Judge Cathy Cochran, a member of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which last week rejected his appeals, wrote that Medellin bragged to his friends that the victims had been virgins until they were attacked by the gang.

"His written confession," Cochran wrote, "displayed a callous, cruel and cavalier attitude toward the two girls that he had raped and helped to murder. Surely no juror or judge will ever forget his words or his sordid deeds."

O'Brien was first to be executed, going to his death in July 2006 with the parting words: "I am sorry. I have always been sorry."

Cantu, also convicted of capital murder, awaits a death date.

Medellin, who grew up in poverty amid drug abuse and an unstable home environment, twice refused to be interviewed for this story.

But on his Web site, posted by a Canadian anti-death penalty group, he claims: "I'm where I am because I made an adolescent choice. That's it!

"My life is in black and white like old western movies," he wrote. "But unlike the movies, the good guys don't always finish first."


'Uncaring and hateful'
This time, death penalty opponents believe, the sovereign state of Texas has gone too far.

"Most of our friends abroad have long since come to the conclusion that this country, on this topic, just doesn't get it," said Southern Methodist University history professor Rick Halperin. "This state is seen as uncaring and hateful. And this case is just right on the top."

The Medellin case will solidify stereotypical views of the Lone Star State, said Halperin, president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and former board chairman of Amnesty International USA.

Cochran, however, disagreed in her appeals court concurrence. "Some societies may judge our death penalty barbaric," she wrote. "Most Texans, however, consider death a just penalty in certain rare circumstances. Many Europeans disagree. So be it."

The politics of capital punishment aside, some legal observers worry that the United States may suffer as a result of Texas' noncompliance with the world court order.

"Outside of Texas this is a huge diplomatic misstep," said Columbia Law School professor Sarah Cleveland. " ... Unfortunately, I doubt that the international community is likely to brush this off as simply the actions of Texas. In the international community (and under all U.S. treaty obligations) the United States is responsible for Texas' actions."


Wide-ranging effect
If the United States fails to observe its treaty commitments, said Cleveland, co-director of the Human Rights Institute, other nations might be inclined to disregard agreements when they become inconvenient.

Affected could be treaties ranging from those mandating protection for foreign nationals to nuclear nonproliferation.

Texas Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, a frequent traveler abroad, said he fears Texas' noncompliance will put American military personnel and civilians at risk.

In ruling that Bush could not unilaterally force states to hold hearings to consider Vienna Convention violations, the Supreme Court noted that power lies in Congress.

Within weeks, U.S. Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., introduced such a bill. It is pending in the House Judiciary Committee and can't be enacted until next year.

allan.turner@chron.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 22356.html

FORGET MEXICO, WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO?

WHAT IS THE UN GOING TO DO TO AMERICANS?

I KNOW -- TAKE LESS MONEY

DON'T BE EASY ON HIM TEXAS.

Go get em Texas...hang that animal Medellin from the higest tree!

Bush, Mexico's elite and the UN will all burn in hell for defending Medellin and other disgusting illegals criminals on death row...how dare them come into our country and brutally murder American citizens!

I applaud the brave state of Texas!

HE DOESNT HAVE LONG NOW.

Originally Posted by EL

Go get em Texas...hang that animal Medellin from the higest tree!

Bush, Mexico's elite and the UN will all burn in hell for defending Medellin and other disgusting illegals criminals on death row...how dare them come into our country and brutally murder American citizens!

I applaud the brave state of Texas!

Well said.