US President George W. Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the state's execution of a Mexican national for the brutal killing of two teenage girls. Texas wants the death penalty to be carried out.
The case of Jose Ernesto Medellin has become a confusing test of presidential power that the US Supreme Court ultimately will sort out.
INTERNATIONAL COURT
The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated their rights to legal help as outlined in the 1963 Vienna Convention.
That is the same court Bush has since said he plans to ignore if it makes similar decisions affecting state criminal laws.
"The president does not agree with the ICJ's interpretation of the Vienna Convention," the administration said in arguments filed with the court. This time, though, the US agreed to abide by the international court's decision because ignoring it would harm US interests abroad, the government said.
Texas argues strenuously that neither the international court nor Bush, his Texas ties notwithstanding, has any say in Medellin's case.
Ted Cruz, the Texas solicitor general, said the administration's position would "allow the president to set aside any state law the president believes is inconvenient to international comity."
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case tomorrow.
Medellin was born in Mexico but spent much of his childhood in the US. He was 18 in June 1993 when he and other members of the Black and Whites gang in Houston encountered Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena on a railroad trestle as the girls were taking a shortcut home.
Ertman, 14, and Pena, 16, were gang-raped and strangled. Their bodies were found four days later.
ARREST
Medellin was arrested a few days after the killings. He was told he had a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present, but police did not tell him that he could request assistance from the Mexican consulate under the 1963 treaty.
Medellin was convicted of murder in the course of a sexual assault, a capital offense in Texas. A judge sentenced him to death in October 1994.
Medellin did not raise the lack of assistance from Mexican diplomats during his trial or sentencing. When he did claim his rights had been violated, Texas and federal courts turned him down because he had not objected at his trial.
Then, in 2003, Mexico sued the US in the ICJ on behalf of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row in the US who also had been denied access to their country's diplomats following their arrests.
Mexico has no death penalty. It and other opponents of capital punishment have sought to use the court to fight for foreigners facing execution in the US.
The court ruled in Mexico's favor in 2004, saying the sentences and convictions should be reviewed.
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