Medellin set to die Tuesday for Ertman-Peña killings

[peejay 327]

Medellin set to die Tuesday for Ertman-Peña killings

Texas defies global outcry from U.N., Bush, other leaders in the controversial case

By ALLAN TURNER

2008 Houston Chronicle

Aug. 4, 2008, 2:10AM

"Texas. It's like a whole other country."

Coined to promote tourism, that wry verbal wink at the state's mythic image has assumed a literal meaning as Texas finds itself in defiance of the United Nations, the Organization of American States and national leaders in its planned Tuesday execution of Mexican citizen Jose Medellin.

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court or Gov. Rick Perry acts in his favor, Medellin, 33, will die for the 1993 rape-strangulation of two teenage Houston girls, Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña.

Jennifer's father, Randy Ertman, dismissed international opposition to the execution.

"It's just a last-ditch effort to keep the scumbag breathing," Ertman said. "He never should have been breathing in the first place. I don't care, I really don't care what anyone thinks about this except Texas. I love Texas. Texas is in my blood."

At issue is Texas' refusal to hold a hearing to determine whether Medellin's defense was harmed by his inability to confer with Mexican consular officials at the time of his arrest. A suspect's right to talk with his consulate is guaranteed by the United Nations' Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the United States is a party.

Medellin insists he told both Houston police and Harris County officers that he is a Mexican citizen. Prosecutors say the killer never informed authorities of his nationality.

In a sworn statement, Medellin said he learned that the Mexican Consulate could possibly help him in 1997, four years after his arrest. He unsuccessfully petitioned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on the issue in 1998.

In 2004, the U.N.'s world court, responding to a Mexican lawsuit against the United States, ordered that hearings be held for Medellin and dozens of other inmates denied their consular rights. In 2005, President Bush called for the hearings to be held. Texas challenged the decision, and the Supreme Court determined that only Congress could mandate such action. In July, the world court ordered Medellin's execution be stayed.

Perry has argued Texas isn't bound by the decisions of international courts and that the state is determined to hold killers, regardless of their nationality, responsible for their crimes.

Texas has rebuffed not only the U.N. and Bush, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the judicial arm of the Organization of American States, which has demanded Medellin receive a new trial.

As politicians worried about the impact on Americans arrested in foreign countries should Texas fail to honor the world court order, prison officials moved Medellin to a special death row cell, where he will be held under constant video surveillance until he is driven to Huntsville's death house.

A tragic tale

The big city wept when little Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña died.

Students at Waltrip High School, Jennifer was 14, and Elizabeth had just turned 16. Their lives were filled with the things that occupy teenage girls. Friends recalled Elizabeth, who was beginning to dabble with makeup, as a "social butterfly." Jennifer tried her hand at basketball before concluding she wasn't cut out for athletics.

On June 24, 1993, the girls were at a party at a friend's apartment when they realized the lateness of the hour. Following the railroad tracks through T.C. Jester Park, they concluded, would shave 10 minutes off their trip to Elizabeth's Oak Forest home.

As the girls made their way past a thicket near White Oak Bayou, they stumbled onto the tail end of a drunken gang initiation. When they blundered into the group of youths, Medellin — 5 feet, 5 inches tall and weighing just 135 pounds — grabbed Elizabeth and flipped her to the ground. Jennifer, drawn by Elizabeth's scream, turned to help and was herself captured.

As the teens cried and struggled, six gang members took turns raping them.

Finally, gang leader Peter Cantu told Medellin, "We're going to have to kill them."

Gang members Derrick O'Brien and Raul Villarreal looped a belt around Jennifer's throat, pulling with such force that the belt broke. Cantu, Medellin and Efrain Perez strangled Elizabeth with a shoelace. Then they stomped on the girls' throats for good measure.

Four days later, police, acting on a tip from a gang member's brother, found the teens' bodies, badly decomposed in the summer heat.

The victims were identified through dental records.

Judge Cathy Cochran, a member of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which last week rejected his appeals, wrote that Medellin bragged to his friends that the victims had been virgins until they were attacked by the gang.

"His written confession," Cochran wrote, "displayed a callous, cruel and cavalier attitude toward the two girls that he had raped and helped to murder. Surely no juror or judge will ever forget his words or his sordid deeds."

O'Brien was first to be executed, going to his death in July 2006 with the parting words: "I am sorry. I have always been sorry."

Cantu, also convicted of capital murder, awaits a death date.

Medellin, who grew up in poverty amid drug abuse and an unstable home environment, twice refused to be interviewed for this story.

But on his Web site, posted by a Canadian anti-death penalty group, he claims: "I'm where I am because I made an adolescent choice. That's it!

"My life is in black and white like old western movies," he wrote. "But unlike the movies, the good guys don't always finish first."

'Uncaring and hateful'

This time, death penalty opponents believe, the sovereign state of Texas has gone too far.

"Most of our friends abroad have long since come to the conclusion that this country, on this topic, just doesn't get it," said Southern Methodist University history professor Rick Halperin. "This state is seen as uncaring and hateful. And this case is just right on the top."

The Medellin case will solidify stereotypical views of the Lone Star State, said Halperin, president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and former board chairman of Amnesty International USA.

Cochran, however, disagreed in her appeals court concurrence. "Some societies may judge our death penalty barbaric," she wrote. "Most Texans, however, consider death a just penalty in certain rare circumstances. Many Europeans disagree. So be it."

The politics of capital punishment aside, some legal observers worry that the United States may suffer as a result of Texas' noncompliance with the world court order.

"Outside of Texas this is a huge diplomatic misstep," said Columbia Law School professor Sarah Cleveland. " ... Unfortunately, I doubt that the international community is likely to brush this off as simply the actions of Texas. In the international community (and under all U.S. treaty obligations) the United States is responsible for Texas' actions."

Wide-ranging effect

If the United States fails to observe its treaty commitments, said Cleveland, co-director of the Human Rights Institute, other nations might be inclined to disregard agreements when they become inconvenient.

Affected could be treaties ranging from those mandating protection for foreign nationals to nuclear nonproliferation.

Texas Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, a frequent traveler abroad, said he fears Texas' noncompliance will put American military personnel and civilians at risk.

In ruling that Bush could not unilaterally force states to hold hearings to consider Vienna Convention violations, the Supreme Court noted that power lies in Congress.

Within weeks, U.S. Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., introduced such a bill. It is pending in the House Judiciary Committee and can't be enacted until next year.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5922356.html

[Scott & Lai 12]

Medellin set to die Tuesday for Ertman-Peña killings

Texas defies global outcry from U.N., Bush, other leaders in the controversial case

By ALLAN TURNER

2008 Houston Chronicle

Aug. 4, 2008, 2:10AM

Medellin, who grew up in poverty amid drug abuse and an unstable home environment, twice refused to be interviewed for this story.

But on his Web site, posted by a Canadian anti-death penalty group, he claims: "I'm where I am because I made an adolescent choice. That's it![url=http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5922356.html]http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5922356.html[/url]

Bullsh!t!

[Ban Hammer 14,280]

he needs to die.

[peejay 327]

he needs to die.

The one that needs to die twice is Cantu. He was defiant during the whole trial. No remorse at all.

[Ban Hammer 14,280]

update: he's dead, jim!

Texas executes Mexican man despite objections

High court rejected request for reprieve in case that drew global scrutiny

updated 1:57 a.m. CT, Wed., Aug. 6, 2008

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A Mexican-born condemned prisoner was executed Tuesday night for the rape and murder of two teenage girls 15 years ago after a divided U.S. Supreme Court rejected his request for a reprieve.

“I’m sorry my actions caused you pain. I hope this brings you the closure that you seek. Never harbor hate,” Jose Medellin said to those gathered to watch him die. Nine minutes later, at 9:57 p.m., he was pronounced dead.

Medellin’s execution, the fifth this year in the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, attracted international attention after he raised claims he wasn’t allowed to consult the Mexican consulate for legal help following his arrest. State officials say he didn’t ask to do so until well after he was convicted of capital murder.

Two teens raped, murdered

Medellin, 33, was condemned for participating in the 1993 gang rape, beating and strangling of Elizabeth Pena, 16, and Jennifer Ertman, 14. He and five fellow gang members attacked the Houston girls as they were walking home on a June night, raped and tortured them for an hour, then kicked and stomped them before using a belt and shoelaces to strangle them.

Their remains were found four days later. By then, Medellin already had bragged to friends about the killings.

Pena’s father, who was among the witnesses, gently tapped the glass that separated him from Medellin as he turned to leave the witness chamber after the execution.

“We feel relieved,” Adolfo Pena said after leaving the prison. “Fifteen years is a long time coming.”

Several dozen demonstrators, about evenly divided between favoring and opposing capital punishment, stood outside on opposite sides of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit.

Medellin’s attorneys contended he was denied the protections of the Vienna Convention, which calls for people arrested to have access to their home country’s consular officials.

“Under the circumstances, it’s hard to talk about what comes next,” lawyer Sandra Babcock said, noting her thoughts were with Medellin’s family and the family of his victims. “But now more than ever, it’s important to recall this is a case not just about one Mexican national on death row in Texas. It’s also about ordinary Americans who count on the protection of the consulate when they travel abroad to strange lands. It’s about the reputation of the United States as a nation that adheres to the rule of law.”

International scrutiny

In Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where Medellin was born, a small group of his relatives condemned his execution.

“Only God has the right to take a life,” cousin Reyna Armendariz said.

Six of his relatives, including Armendariz, and several activists gathered earlier Tuesday in a working-class neighborhood to await word on Medellin’s fate.

A large black bow and a banner that read “No to the death penalty ... may God forgive you,” hung from an iron fence in front of the house where Medellin lived until moving to the United States at the age of 3. He grew up in Houston, where he learned English and attended school.

The International Court of Justice said Medellin and some 50 other Mexicans on death row around the United States should have new hearings in U.S. courts to determine whether the 1963 treaty was violated during their arrests. Medellin was the first among them to die.

President Bush asked states to review the cases, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year neither the president nor the international court can force Texas to wait.

Gov. Rick Perry, Texas courts and the Texas attorney general’s office all said the execution should go forward and that Medellin has had multiple legal reviews. State officials noted Medellin never invoked his consular rights under the Vienna Convention until some four years after he was convicted.

High court divided

His lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to stop the execution until legislation could be passed to formalize case reviews ordered by the International Court of Justice.

The high court said in its ruling that that possibility was too remote to justify a stay. Justice Stephen Breyer, one of four justices who issued dissenting opinions, wrote that to permit the execution would place the United States “irremediably in violation of international law and breaks our treaty promises.”

Medellin’s supporters said either Congress or the Texas Legislature should have been given a chance to pass a law setting up procedures for new hearings. A bill to implement the international court’s ruling wasn’t introduced in Congress until last month. The Texas Legislature doesn’t meet until January.

On Monday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request for a reprieve and denied his lawyers permission to file new appeals. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also rejected requests for clemency and a 240-day reprieve.

One of Medellin’s fellow gang members, Derrick O’Brien, was executed two years ago. Another, Peter Cantu, described as the ringleader of the group, is on death row. He does not have a death date.

Two others, Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal, had their death sentences commuted to life in prison when the Supreme Court barred executions for those who were 17 at the time of their crimes. The sixth person convicted, Medellin’s brother, Vernancio, was 14 at the time and is serving a 40-year prison term.

link

:dance: :dance: :dance:

[Mononoke28 137]

The only reason I'm not happy about this is because he had a much less painful and more peaceful death than those poor girls. I don't believe in the death penalty because it's just too easy for these monsters, it's best if they pay for these crimes here on earth and think about what they did until they die.

Diana

[Nagishkaw 510]

Good, F**k him.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

That child raping murderer is dead. woot!!!

Shame on you bleeding hearts.

[Nagishkaw 510]

They should have stomped on his throat afterward to make certain he was really dead.

[Scott & Lai 12]

They should have stomped on his throat afterward to make certain he was really dead.