Texas Death Penalty Case in the News

Tonight when you watch the news, you might see some tongue-in-cheek commentary about tonight’s scheduled execution of Jose Medellin here in Texas. I want everybody that’s interested to know the facts…..all of the facts.

I want to cut and paste an article that explains some of the high points of the case. I chose this article from the Houston Chronicle which is an extremely liberal, left-leaning newspaper so that I am not accused of being biased in my conservative political beliefs. Also bear-in-mind, that he was three years old when he moved to Texas.
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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

"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.com

 

It's unfortunate that the levels of government haven't worked together here. Not sure what the fallout might be should he be executed.

However... It is my personal belief, International Law withstanding, that Medellin was either 17-18 years of age (with approximately 14-15 of those years in the U.S.). Unless he suffers from some sort of mental deficiency, he understood the consequences of his actions and therefore should pay for said actions by the governing laws of the state where the crime was committed. Otherwise what will keep foreigners who hail from countries that lack Capital Punishment from committing grisly crimes here in the U.S.? The only thing that they will have to fear is a ride home and a sentence that pales in comparison to what they will serve here.

I'm sorry... but he and his buddies gang raped and murdered two young girls. Death is almost too good for them.

 

Unfortunately Steve we have a lot of cases where people come to the US, commit a crime, wave their flag and go home to be released. There are several murders that killed people in the US and are walking the streets in Europe today. It gets to the point where we really don't care. If we murder someone in your country then we expect to be subject to your laws. You should expect the same in the US.

Maybe I haven't heard enough but I have never heard of a single US citizen that has murdered someone in another country, been tried and convicted there, and then sent back to the US and released.

Or the other situation that happened a couple of months ago in NYC where a guy murdered someone, got released on bond, had his passport pulled by the US, and then had his embassy in NYC issue him another passport so he could go home. Now his government wants all the evidence sent to them so they can see if they think there is enough of a case to send him back to stand trial. Meanwhile he’s free to walk the street in his country.

Nope, you gang rape a couple of girls, beat them to death and then brag about it to your friends you get no quarter from here. "...an adolescent choice..." give me a break.

I know you are just pointing out that it makes it dicer when US citizens travel but like I said, if I kill someone I expect to pay the price of their country rules. Not one of the objectors have said that he was innocent, just that he shouldn't die. Don't want to die for committing murder? Don't come to the US and commit murder. We execute murders here.

....stepping down off the soapbox now....

Jamie

 

A truly disgusting crime for which he has paid the ultimate price,

I agree with the death sentence and the thing about his claim to use the international treaty is the fact that he moved to the USA when he was 3 or 6 years old (Depending on which articles you wish to believe) he was educated and lived in the USA for the majority of his life but when he commited a crime he tries to reclaim his mexican nationality, this was just a last ditch effort of a desperate coward

 

Actually he didnt mention ANYTHING about his "mexican heritage" while arrested OR during his trail which, by law, would have changed his sentance and gave him life. He brought his up awhile after he was sentance and on death row! This could be debated until the end of time, whether or not you believe in the death penalty, and whether or not texas should have went with the US treaty. He paid for his crime though, but I personally would have been ok with a firing squad! :?

 

Great comments.

Here are some points to ponder:

The argument is that he was denied access to the Mexican Consulate BEFORE he was convicted and therefore violates the Vienna Convention. To which the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, responds:

Judge Cathy Cochran said Medellin, who was brought to the United States when he was 3, indeed was a Mexican citizen. But she said he had lived in the U.S. for 15 of his 18 years and spoke fluent English while he never obtained or sought American citizenship.

"His claim is that no one informed him of his right to contact the Mexican consulate," she wrote. "This is true. It also is true that he was never denied access to the Mexican consulate.

"The problem is that he apparently never told any law enforcement or judicial official that he was a Mexican citizen until some four years after his conviction."

The fact that in 2004, the World Court said that Medellin should have new court hearings to determine whether the absence of contact with consular officials affected the case has no bearing here. The World Court has NO jurisdiction in Texas . None, nada, zipo. Nowhere in the Texas Constitution or the U.S. Constitution is there any mention of the right of a world judicial branch to usurp its power.

Medellin committed a state felony and is under the jurisdiction of the state of Texas . Even the liberal U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he was not denied due process. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled as recently as last night this case followed the letter of the law and that the World Court ruling is not binding.

There is no doubt of his guilt from either side. He did it. He said he did it. This is merely a tactic of the Word Court to intervene and try to get him extradited to Mexico.

He knew what were the consequences of his actions and now he has paid it.
Marsh

 

I’ve got to strongly disagree with you on this one Steve.

The state of Texas and the U.S. Supreme Court do not believe that they are in violation with the Vienna Convention. He was not denied access to his consulate (as stated in the VC). The World Court does not dispute that point.

The World Court wants him re-tried because he was denied access BEFORE he was convicted. The state of Texas and the U.S. Supreme Court contend that since he did not claim to be a Mexican National until 4 years AFTER his conviction, he has waived his diplomatic rights.

The World Court then tried to flex its muscle by issuing a ruling calling for a new trial. The state of Texas and the U.S. Supreme Court strongly contend that the World Court has no jurisdiction to overturn any U.S. case. We are not in violation of the VC and that the World Court is trying to overstep their authority by getting the case commuted to a life sentence or extradited to Mexico. (BTW in Texas there is no “life sentence without parole”-all lifers are eventually up for parole……Charles Mansion comes up every five years or so)

In a nutshell, this is not what the designers of the VC were trying achieve. This is not a case of a misguided tourist violating a law and then denied conference with their consulate. Medellin has been in this state since he was able to talk. He was educated in our schools and had full knowledge of the law. He chose to break the law and then tries to play diplomatic immunity card fours years after his conviction. The only reason the World Court is involved here is that they are vehemently opposed to the death penalty and they are trying to enforce that belief system on us. Right now, the World Court is trying to overturn over 50 Texas death row cases.

This is not Texas or the U.S. not complying with its treaties, this is the World Court intervening where it shouldn’t.
Marsh