Texas Turns Aside Pressure on Execution of 5 Mexicans

Texas Turns Aside Pressure on Execution of 5 Mexicans

Despite pleas from the White House and the State Department, as well as an
international court order to review their cases, Texas will execute five
Mexicans on death row, a spokeswoman for the governor said Thursday.

The 1st of the executions that of Jos Ernesto Medelln, 33, convicted in
the 1993 rape and murder of 2 teenage girls here is scheduled for Aug. 5.

The decision by Gov. Rick Perry to allow the executions is the latest
twist in a long-running battle between Mexico, which has no death penalty,
and the United States over the fate of 51 Mexicans facing capital
punishment in several states, including 14 in Texas.

On Wednesday, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ordered a
review of five of the Texas cases after Mexico complained that the
convicts, all men, had not been allowed a chance to talk to a Mexican
consul after their arrests, as required under the 1963 Vienna Convention
on Consular Relations.

But that argument holds little sway in Texas, a place with a long history
of upholding the death penalty and of telling other governments to mind
their own business.

"This ruling doesn't change anything," said Mr. Perry's spokeswoman,
Allison Castle. "This is an individual who brutally gang-raped and
murdered 2 teenage women. We don't really care where you are from; you
can't do that to our citizens."

The ruling went further than a 2004 decision by the international court,
which again sided with Mexico, ordering a review of all 51 cases to
determine if a consuls intervention might have changed the outcome.

President Bush, who as Texas' governor oversaw 152 executions, ordered his
home state to comply with the international court. But Texas refused and
fought Mr. Bush's order in court. In March, the United States Supreme
Court ruled that the president had overstepped his powers and that only
Congress could require the state to change its judicial procedures to
comply with the 1963 treaty.

On Monday, Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California,
submitted legislation to deal with the Supreme Court's ruling. The bill,
though, is not expected to come up for a vote anytime soon, especially in
the charged atmosphere of an election year, aides to Mr. Berman said.

State Department officials said the execution of Mr. Medelln and the other
4 convicted killers might erode the ability of the United States to help
people accused of crimes abroad.

Mr. Perry, a Republican, stood firm, saying the Supreme Court ruling in
March had freed Texas to go ahead with the executions, starting with that
of Mr. Medelln, 1 of 6 young men that a jury found had raped and strangled
Elizabeth Pea, 16, and Jennifer Ertman, 15, in a park one night. Mr.
Medelln was 18 at the time and had lived most of his life in Texas; he
signed a confession in English.

A spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, Ricardo Alday, accused
Texas of "an irreparable breach of international obligation" if it did not
delay the executions until Congress could act on Mr. Berman's bill.

A lawyer representing Mr. Medelln, Donald Francis Donovan of New York,
said he would seek such a delay in Texas state court.

"Everyone agrees that the U.S. made a deal here," Mr. Donovan said, "and
for Texas to breach that deal when it was made by the people of the United
States as a whole would not be right."

For relatives of the murdered girls, questions about international
relations seem irrelevant.

"This has nothing to do with the World Court; it has nothing to do with
the U.N.," said Jennifer's father, Randy Ertman. "This has everything to
do with what Mexico wants, not what Texas wants. The people of Texas want
the death penalty."

(source: New York Times)