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Texas turns aside pressure on execution of 5 Mexicans

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State says death penalties will be carried out despite review by international court.

By James C. McKinley Jr.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Friday, July 18, 2008

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

The first of the executions ? that of Jose Ernesto Medellin, 33, convicted in the 1993 rape and murder of two teenage girls in Houston ? 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 on death row 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.

"This ruling doesn't change anything," said Perry's spokeswoman, Allison Castle. "This is an individual who brutally gang-raped and murdered two 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 also sided with Mexico and ordered a review of all 51 cases to determine whether a consul's intervention might have changed the outcome.

President Bush, who as Texas' governor oversaw 152 executions, ordered his home state to comply with that ruling. But Texas refused and fought Bush's order in court.

In March, the U.S. 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.

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

Perry, a Republican, stood firm, saying the Supreme Court ruling in March had freed Texas to proceed with the executions, starting with that of Medellin, one of six young men who a jury found had raped and strangled Elizabeth Pena, 16, and Jennifer Ertman, 15, in a park one night.

Medellin was 18 at the time and had lived most of his life in Texas; he signed a confession in English.