USA - 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 (see July 16), Texas will execute five Mexicans on death row, a spokeswoman for the governor said today. The 1st of the executions — that of José Ernesto Medellín, 33, convicted in the 1993 rape and murder of 2 teenage girls — is scheduled for Aug. 5. 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. "The world court has no standing in Texas and Texas is not bound by a ruling or edict from a foreign court," Perry spokesman Robert Black said. "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." On March 25, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that president Bush could not compel Texas to review Medellin's case 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. Medellín 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. Medellín, who was 18 at the time and had lived most of his life in Texas, and had 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. 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."