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 News from Around the Americas | October 2007 
Bush Tries to Halt Execution of Convicted Killer in Texas
 Suzanne Goldenberg - The Guardian
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| | This undated photo released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows death row inmate Jose Ernesto Medellin. Texas wants President Bush to get out of the way of the state's plan to execute a Mexican for the brutal killing of two teenage girls. Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the execution of Medellin in what has become a confusing test of presidential power that the Supreme Court, which hears the case this week, ultimately will sort out. (AP/Texas Department of Criminal Justice) |
President George Bush, who signed the death warrant for 152 prisoners as governor of Texas, this week faces a rare challenge from his home state against his efforts to block the execution of a convicted killer from Mexico.
The case of Jose Ernesto Medellin, to go before the supreme court on Wednesday, examines whether the president has the power to set aside a state law that conflicts with an international treaty.
It puts Mr Bush in the unusual position of arguing against the death penalty and against the very same Texans who helped put him in the White House. Even more unusually, it puts Mr Bush on the same side of the dispute as the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
But the confrontation is more likely to turn on the dividing line between state and presidential powers than on the legitimacy of the death penalty. The supreme court is to deal more directly with the death penalty next January when it hears arguments against the use of lethal injection, the main method of execution in the US.
Wednesday's case began with a death row appeal from Medellin, a gang member from Houston who was just 18 when he raped and strangled to death two teenage girls in 1993. After a decade on death row, in 2004 the Mexican government obtained a ruling from the International Court of Justice on Mr Medellin's behalf that state police had violated his right to access to consular officials from Mexico. Mr Medellin, who was born in Mexico, has lived in the US since he was nine years old, although he was never a legal resident.
The judgment found that the Texas authorities failed to tell Mr Medellin and 50 other death row inmates from Mexico of their rights under the Vienna Convention to seek advice from the Mexican consulate, or to inform consular officials about their cases.
Mr Bush issued a memorandum two months later that the US courts would implement the ICJ ruling. The Bush administration is expected to argue that the president's executive power over treaty provisions outranks state laws.
Although the administration notes that it does not agree with the ICJ's interpretation of the Vienna Convention, it says it will abide by the court's decision for the sake of protecting US interests abroad.
However, Texas argues that Mr Bush's memo on the death penalty case would set a dangerous precedent for presidential power. The state argues that Mr Bush's action disregards earlier verdicts by an appeals court and the supreme court that Mr Medellin was not entitled to invoke his rights as a Mexican citizen because he had not raised the issue at his original trial.
In a speech to a conservative legal group in Washington, Ted Cruz, the state's solicitor general and a key adviser on Mr Bush's 2000 election campaign, accused the president of overstepping his authority. "This president's exercise of this power is egregiously beyond the bounds of presidential authority," he said.
Supreme Court to Consider Case Pitting Bush Against Texas in Death Row Case
Linda Young - AHN
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Washington, DC - On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that pits President Bush, former governor of Texas who signed 152 execution orders, against his home state that wants to execute a Mexican for the brutal murder of two teenage girls.
Bush wants to halt the execution of Mexican Jose Ernesto Medellin convicted of raping and killing two girls, aged 14 and 15. Medellin was 18 when he, along with other members of a gang, caught, raped and killed the teens as they were walking home in 1993.
Although he had spent most of his life in America, Medellin had been born in Mexico, which means that under international law he should have had access to his country's diplomats when he was arrested. However, when Medellin was arrested, police only told him that he had a right to be silent or have an attorney; they did not tell him he had a right to contact the Mexican consulate for help under a 1963 treaty.
Mexico has no death penalty and in 2003 brought suit against the United States in international court in the Hague in Medellin's case and 50 other Mexican nationals on death row. The court ruled for Mexico in 2004, saying the convictions should be reviewed in U.S. courts.
Saying that the execution would harm American interests, Bush has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to agree that as president he has the power to put ignore a state law that conflicts with international law. However, he has also said that if the Supreme Court sides with him on this issue and later makes similar decisions affecting state laws that he plans to ignore them.
"The president does not agree with the ICJ's interpretation of the Vienna Convention," the administration said in arguments filed with the court, adding that the U.S. agreed this time to abide by the international court's decision because ignoring it would harm American interests abroad, the government said, according to Associated Press reports.
However, the Texas solicitor general, Ted Cruz, has a problem with Bush's position of overturning Medellin's execution.
Cruz was quoted by the AP as saying that the administration's position would "allow the president to set aside any state law the president believes is inconvenient to international comity."
But Cruz, who served as a key adviser on Bush's 2000 election campaign, was more blunt in criticizing Bush for overstepping his authority in a speech to a conservative legal group in Washington.
"This president's exercise of this power is egregiously beyond the bounds of presidential authority," Cruz was quoted as saying by the Guardian Unlimited.
Although the White House had criticized the ICJ decision, in 2005, it had ordered the Texas courts to allow Medellin's habeas corpus claim challenging his conviction. Cruz said it was the first time the U.S. gave a foreign tribunal power over the American justice system. |
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