International Courts > Texas Courts?

Nope.

An unrepentant Texas said on Thursday it would ignore a World Court order demanding it stay the executions of two Mexicans, a decision likely to create more friction between the United States and its allies over capital punishment.

The International Court of Justice at The Hague on Wednesday ordered the U.S. to stay the executions of three Mexicans and reserved the right to intervene in dozens of other cases.

"An unrepentant Texas." I like that, in some perverse way. I take serious issue with the Court's reservation of it's right to intervene in other cases. It should have no jurisdiction here, it isn't a part of our criminal system, and it wasn't created by Texas or US law.

Two of those affected -- Cesar Robert Fierro Reyna and Roberto Moreno Ramos -- are in Texas and the third, Osvaldo Torres Aguilera, is in Oklahoma. None of the three has an execution date yet.

The State Department is reviewing the order and has not said whether Washington will order Texas and Oklahoma to stay the executions. The U.S. argued the order would interfere with its sovereign right to administer its criminal justice system.

"According to our reading of the law and the treaty, there is no authority for the federal government or this World Court to prohibit Texas from exercising the laws passed by our legislature," said Gene Acuna, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The state is by far the nation's death penalty leader.

I agree. The Constitution allows the death penalty and grants the right to the states to implement it if they choose to.

Mexico brought the World Court case last month, arguing that 54 of its citizens on death row should get retrials. It accused U.S. police of violating an international treaty by failing to tell the men of their right to consular assistance after being arrested.

If this is the extent of the formal disagreement, then I'd have to side with Texas on this. If there were questions regarding the actual case as it moved through the system, then I'd change my mind. But this seems like a procedural affair, one that doesn't bring any material bearing on the facts of the acusations and defense. The complaint is that they weren't informed that they have the right to speak with their consular officials immediately following their arrest. This is a technicality imposed on us by the 1963 Vienna convention and is now interfering with our right to enforce our legal code.

And what the fuck is up with this Reuters article? Let me quote some asides and adjectives, written to add information to the piece.

An unrepentant Texas...The state is by far the nation's death penalty leader...an inmate is often given a date and is even brought into the death house while last-minute appeals work their way through the courts...Texas, the only U.S. state to have once been an independent country, has long resisted external interference in its affairs and has a history of ignoring pleas for clemency...He was the 296th inmate executed in Texas since 1982, four years after national death penalty ban was lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court...The United States is the only Western democracy to carry out the death penalty.

And yet nowhere do we get to know what these Mexicans did to earn them the death penalty. That seems rather pertinent given Reuters' desire to add all this other useful information, yes?

Posted by Drizzten at February 06, 2003 09:30 PM