The planned execution this week of a Mexican-born man convicted in one of Houston’s most brutal murder cases in a generation has become among the most contentious in Texas, the busiest capital punishment state in the US.
International attention has been focused on the execution of convicted killer Jose Medellin scheduled for today. The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, said Medellin and some 50 other Mexicans on death row around the country should have new hearings in US courts to determine whether a 1963 treaty was violated during their arrests.
Medellin, now 33, is the first among the 50 who is set to die.
His attorneys contend Medellin was denied the protections of the Vienna Convention, which calls for people arrested to have access to their home country’s consular officials. He has been in the US since the age of three.
“The United States’ word should not be so carelessly broken, nor its standing in the international community so needlessly compromised,” Medellin’s attorneys said, seeking a reprieve in a filing late last week with the US Supreme Court.
The court had not issued any ruling as of Sunday.
US President George W. Bush has asked states to review the cases. Texas has refused to budge.
The US embassy in Mexico warned of possible protests there today.
Medellin’s lawyers went to the Supreme Court after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, refused to stop the lethal injection. The justices ruled in March that neither the president nor the international court can force Texas’ hand.
“There is no dispute that if Texas executes Mr Medellin in these circumstances, Texas would cause the United States irreparably to breach treaty commitments made on behalf of the United States as a whole and thereby compromise US interests that both this Court and the president have described as compelling,” Medellin’s attorneys said in their filing.
Texas officials acknowledge that Medellin was not told he could ask for help from Mexican diplomats, but argued he forfeited the right because he never raised the issue until four years after his conviction.
In any case, the diplomats’ intercession would not have made any difference in the outcome of the case, they said.
Medellin speaks, reads and writes English and gave a written confession.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said on an anti-death penalty Web site where inmates seek pen pals. “I’m where I’m at because I made an adolescent choice.”
Medellin, on death row for almost 14 years, was one of six teenagers arrested and charged with the gang rape and murders of Elizabeth Pena, 16, and Jennifer Ertman, 14.
The two Houston girls, returning from a friend’s house, took a shortcut home and stumbled on a group of teenagers drinking beer after initiating a new gang member.
Evidence showed the girls were gang raped for more than an hour, then were kicked, beaten and strangled. Their bodies were found four days later.
A tip from the brother of one of the gang members led police to Medellin and the others.
One of the gang members, Derrick O’Brien, was executed last year.
The death sentences of two others, Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal, were commuted to life in prison when the Supreme Court barred executions for those who were 17 at the time of their crimes.
A fourth, Peter Cantu, described by authorities as the ringleader, is on death row but no execution date has been set.
The sixth person convicted, Medellin’s brother, Vernancio, was 14 at the time and is serving a 40-year prison term.
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