Murderer Medellin Executed At Last—No Thanks To Bush Administration

By Brenda Walker
http://www.vdare.com/
August 06, 2008

Brenda Walker Archive

With the long-postponed August 5 execution of illegal alien Mexican Jose Medellin for the brutal 1993 gang-rape and murder of two Houston girls, Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, in 1993, a sense of relief has passed throughout Texas and beyond.

Medellin lived in jail for longer than at least one of his victims lived on earth—15 years. Too long, if you believe that justice delayed is justice denied.

Jose Medellin

Not only was Medellin a depraved gangmember of the worst kind, he had become a poster Mexican martyr—revealing much that is wrong with the White House, where the Mexichurian President took the side of the killer and worked against the families of the murdered girls. Bush leaned hard on the Texas courts to consider the objection of the International Court of Justice—that Medellin's arrest did not include informing him of his right to contact the Mexican Consulate under the Vienna Convention—yet another instance of his energetic pursuit of the well-being of Mexicans to the detriment of American citizens.

Bush's meddling was a clear violation of the separation of powers, one of the basic principles of our system of government. As Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX, and a former judge) remarked on CNN (Oct 10, 2007), "...under the separation of powers, the president hasn't—does not have any authority over any court to tell them what to do. And the highest court in Texas recently ruled, in all respect to the president, that he has no jurisdiction in this matter at all."

The Supreme Court agreed with Rep. Poe in March. It ruled in a 6-3 vote that US State courts are bound neither by the President's whim nor the dictates of European jurists. (Read Chief Justice Roberts' majority opinion.)

Back in Bush's pre-globalist days, when he was Governor of Texas, he presided over the execution of 152 inmates during six years. But as President, he has acted more like a Citizen of the World than Americans' #1 advocate, which he has never been.

Texans, from Governor Rick Perry to average folk, remained unimpressed throughout with the demands of the self-important World Court. As Sam Houston remarked: "Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may."

Bush dispatched some Washington lawyers to convince the stubborn Texans that the big picture of international relations required an attitude adjustment. No deal.

“But Gov. Perry remains resolute. Spokesman Robert Black admits the federal government has ‘a big sort of dilemma’ because the United States as a whole is obligated to abide by international treaty obligations, but individual states are not.

“Still, ‘the governor isn't feeling any pressure on this simply because he is here to uphold the laws of the state of Texas and not some foreign court in Europe,’ he said.

" ‘Two young girls were brutally gang raped and murdered, and the governor is not willing to say that any foreign national is going to get any additional protection under the law than a Texas citizen would,’ Mr. Black said.” [Federal officials try to block Texas execution to allow review of case, By Diane Jennings, Dallas Morning News, July 28, 2008]

The snooty scribblers at the Wall Street Journal [Looming Texas Execution Gets Spotlight, By Ashby Jones, August 1, 2008] typified the elite, international relations view:

"The Medellín case has become about more than whether a Mexican national is executed. To some, the case highlights the enduring strength of the U.S.'s federalist system; that states do not have to yield to interpretations of law made by foreign courts. To others, the case represents a chance for the U.S. to burnish its credibility in the international community or, alternatively, to risk the diminution of its citizens' rights overseas. To others still, the case is a referendum on the death penalty. "

The WSJ noted every aspect of the case but one—that it was a crime of the most terrible violence against two real victims, who are no longer alive.
Furthermore, had the Supreme Court not swatted down the World Court busybodies and upheld American sovereignty, the case would have been a new extreme for globalist legal intrusion and a very bad precedent. As Richard Samp of the Washington Legal Foundation observed on CNN August 4, "The World Court has never before this case tried to interfere with an individual criminal case going on within some country around the world, and there's no reason under United States law to make this the first case."

The word should go out to Mexico and other permissive backwaters: if you sodomize and strangle a girl in Texas—Medellin admitted killing one of the girls with his shoelace—you will eventually face the needle and be put down like a mad dog.

The Attorney General of Texas, Greg Abbott, issued a media advisory July 29 to remind people of the grim facts of the case:

"Subsequent boastful statements of Medellin and other gang members revealed that what ensued was a brutal gang rape of both girls by the gang members. After the assault, Medellin, Raul, Efrain, and Peter met at Peter's house where he lived with his brother and sister-in-law, Joe and Christina Cantu, to brag about their exploits. Christina noticed that Raul was bleeding and that Efrain had blood on his shirt. She asked the group what had occurred and Medellin responded that they ‘had fun’ and that their exploits would be seen on the television news. Medellin was hyper, giggling, and laughing. He boasted to Joe and Christina that the group had met two girls and had sex with them. He also told the couple that the two girls had been talking to them and that he punched one of the girls because she had started screaming after he grabbed her. "

One of the convicted killers, Derrick O'Brien, [VDARE.com note: Picture here.] was executed in 2006. He at least had the decency to make what sounded like a sincere apology to the Ertman and Pena families.

"‘I am sorry. I have always been sorry,’ O'Brien said as he lay on the gurney, waiting for the lethal flow of drugs to begin. ‘It is the worst mistake that I ever made in my whole life. Not because I am here, but because of what I did. I hurt a lot of people—you and my family.’” [O'Brien executed for rape-murders, Houston Chronicle, July 12, 2006]

Remorse for a heinous crime doesn't help the families, who can never be made whole. But at least we in the public are reassured somehow that the recognition of right and wrong has not been completely obliterated in modern society, even in prison.

In comparison, see the remarks of a death-row do-gooder in a letter to the editor (responding to an editorial, Gov. Perry should halt this execution) in the Dallas Morning News, August 3, 2008, This man changed my mind:

"I have met José Medellín. I wrote him. I have run a death row ministry in Texas for years.

“He has never shown any remorse. He has proudly confessed. I used to be opposed to the death penalty until I met José.

“Where is your respect and sympathy for the victims and their families? You have not even mentioned the two girls this sick creep murdered, or their families.

“José Medellín found it convenient to be a Mexican citizen when he found out it could save him. What a disgrace to all the good, honest, law-abiding Mexicans.

“Execute him already. The girls, along with their families, deserve justice."

Michael Denson, founder, Catholic Death Row Ministry, Frisco

That's quite a reversal coming from someone dedicated to ministering among prisoners.

And Denson was correct that the case had been dragged out for far too long already. A Texas Department of Criminal Justice fact sheet reports that the average length of stay prior to execution is 10.26 years. So Medellin overstayed his welcome by half.

Meanwhile in gentle Mexico (with its #6 world ranking in murders per capita and general uptick in failing state syndrome caused by criminal drug cartels that act like armies), the official view is disapproval of capital punishment. Particularly so when members of its tribe are threatened with justice for their brutal crimes in the United States.

However, in a huge anti-crime march in Mexico City attended by a quarter million unhappy citizens in 2004, many carried banners demanding the death penalty. A 2007 AP-Ipsos poll in Mexico found 71 percent supported life termination as a punishment choice. Perhaps the anti-execution viewpoint is an elite opinion only—and one useful against the hated Americans.

At any rate, Mexicans need to hear the message that American laws continue to rule in the United States despite the objection to sovereignty from internationalist one-worlders and Raza Marxicans. That intent cannot be repeated often enough.

The final curtain for Medellin did not come down until the usual last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court, which slowed the wheels of justice for a few more hours.

But finally the execution was carried out—to the satisfaction of still-grieving father Adolfo Pena who attended the execution and remarked, "We feel relieved. Fifteen years is a long time coming." (Mexican-born inmate executed for deaths of 2 Houston teenagers, KLTV, Tyler Texas)

The other father, Randy Ertman, has never minced words about the case, the politics slowing justice or his opinion of Mexico (Texas executes Mexican-born killer, Google AP, August 5, 2008).

“Randy Ertman, who lost his daughter in the attack, said Medellin's supporters were misguided.

" ‘Mexico has a big yard down there full of filth and murders and gangs and drug cartels and they're not mentioning anything about that,’ he said. ‘There's where they need to start their work.’"

There's no argument with that sentiment. But it is a hard-won wisdom—one that no parent should have to learn in such a cruel way.

- Brenda Walker (email her) lives in Northern California and publishes two websites, LimitsToGrowth.org and ImmigrationsHumanCost.org. Even though Phil Sheridan said, "if I owned Hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell”, she thinks Texas looks pretty good right now.