El Presidento Boosh allowed a White Canadian to be executed, now blocks a Mexican’s execution
Bush blocks Mexican’s execution
International Law; Similar to case of Canadian put to death
WASHINGTON – In the months before Texas executed Canadian Stanley Faulder in June, 1999, George W. Bush made it clear what he thought about outsiders who challenged his state’s right to carry out the death penalty.
“Foreigners can’t expect to get away with murder in the state of Texas,” said Mr. Bush, then the governor of Texas. That was then, this is now.
In a surprise legal turnabout, President Bush intervened with the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday to save the life of a Mexican citizen facing the death penalty in Texas, claiming his execution would violate international law.
The legal principles in the case are almost identical to those Mr. Bush rejected when the Canadian government appealed for clemency on behalf of Faulder, a 61-year-old Alberta man executed eight years ago for murdering an elderly Texas oil matriarch.
In oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday, Bush administration lawyers said that Texas cannot execute Jose Ernesto Medellin for the rape and murder of two teenage girls because state authorities failed to notify him of his Vienna Convention rights to contact Mexican consular officials after his arrest.
U.S. Solicitor-General Paul Clement argued that Texas must adhere to a 2004 decision by the International Court of Justice, which found that Texas violated Medellin’s rights to consular access. The ICJ, also known as the World Court, ordered the United States to review Medellin’s conviction and sentence.
After Texas initially balked, Mr. Bush personally intervened by issuing a presidential order in February, 2005, instructing the state to comply with the ICJ ruling.
In a prior written brief to the court, the administration argued that any rejection of the ICJ ruling would “place the United States in breach of its international law obligation … and frustrate the president’s judgment that foreign policy interests are best served by giving effect to that decision.”
Mr. Bush’s position in the Medellin case stands in stark contrast to his views as governor of Texas, when he oversaw the executions of Faulder and 151 other death row inmates.
Faulder, originally from Jasper, Alta., was executed for the 1975 stabbing death of 75-year-old Inez Phillips, a widow from a wealthy oil family in Gladewater, Tex.
Although Faulder was not notified of his consular rights at the time — and Canadian officials never learned of his 1978 conviction until 1992 — a Texas review board determined the oversight was a “harmless error.”
Mr. Bush turned aside appeals from then-foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy to grant Faulder a reprieve because of the consular rights violation.
The only issue for Mr. Bush at the time was whether Faulder had killed Mrs. Phillips.
“People can’t just come into our state and cold-bloodedly murder somebody. That’s unacceptable, regardless of nationality,” Mr. Bush said at the time.
One major difference in the cases of Faulder and Medellin is that, unlike the Mexican government, Canada was never able to challenge the actions of Texas authorities before the ICJ.
Boosh: OK to execute the White killer below.
Boosh: No can execute the Mexican killer below.
To put it bluntly, 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 Jose Ernesto Medellin in what has become a confusing test of presidential power that the Supreme Court ultimately will sort out.
The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated their rights to legal help as outlined in the 1963 Vienna Convention.
That is the same court Bush has since said he plans to ignore if it makes similar decisions affecting state criminal laws.
“The president does not agree with the ICJ’s interpretation of the Vienna Convention,” the administration said in arguments filed with the court. This time, though, the U.S. agreed to abide by the international court’s decision because ignoring it would harm American interests abroad, the government said.
Texas argues strenuously that neither the international court nor Bush, his Texas ties notwithstanding, has any say in Medellin’s case.
Ted Cruz, the Texas solicitor general, said the administration’s position would “allow the president to set aside any state law the president believes is inconvenient to international comity.”
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case Wednesday.
Medellin was born in Mexico but spent much of his childhood in the United States. He was 18 in June 1993, when he and other members of the Black and Whites gang in Houston encountered Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena on a railroad trestle as the girls were taking a shortcut home.
Ertman, 14, and Pena, 16, were gang-raped and strangled. Their bodies were found four days later.
