Justice, American-Style

Justice, American-Style


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, August 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Jurisprudence: Over international objections, a foreign-born killer of American citizens is executed in Texas. Would this be allowed to happen in the administration of "citizen of the world" Barack Obama?

It took 15 years, but Mexican-born Jose Medellin, who confessed to and was convicted of participating in the rape and murder of two Houston teenagers in 1993, was executed Tuesday after a four-hour delay while the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a final appeal based on the alleged denial of his right to contact the Mexican consulate for legal assistance under a 1963 treaty known as the Vienna Convention.

In 1993, Medellin confessed to participating in the rape and murder of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, who were sodomized and strangled with their own shoelaces. Medellin bragged about keeping one girl's Mickey Mouse watch as a souvenir of the crime. He and four others were convicted of capital murder and sent to Texas' death row.

The International Court of Justice, formerly the World Court, ruled in 2004 that U.S. courts should review the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners on death row because of the alleged treaty violation. The ICJ ordered — yes, ordered — the U.S. to "provide, by means of its own choosing, review and reconsideration of the conviction and sentence of Medellin and the others."

Texas authorities argued that Medellin never sought Mexican consular protections until four years after he was arrested. By then, he had already been tried for capital murder and rape, convicted and condemned. The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals upheld the conviction on the grounds that Medellin hadn't complained of any violation of his consular rights under the treaty, and therefore had waived them.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court gave the final word on Medellin's appeal. Writing the 6-3 majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts, whose confirmation Sen. Obama voted against, said that a Texas court, or any American court, is not under any obligation to obey and be subservient to any foreign court.

"(N)ot all international law obligations automatically constitute binding federal law enforceable in the United State courts," Roberts wrote. He noted that giving "the judgments of an international tribunal a higher status than that enjoyed by many of our most fundamental constitutional protections" was never a consideration of those who wrote the U.S. Constitution.

Ted Cruz, solicitor general of Texas, applauded the high court's decision. "The United States Constitution vests sovereignty in the Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the president, the 50 states, and ultimately, in We the People," he said. "Had Medellin prevailed, American sovereignty and independence would have been gravely undermined."

The type of justices a President Obama might nominate would defer to the ICJ and welcome the intrusion of foreign law and foreign entities into U.S. jurisprudence.

In a speech in South Africa recently, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that if judges can consult law review articles and such in the U.S., "why not the analysis of a question similar to the one we confront contained in an opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the German Constitutional Court or the European Court of Human Rights?"

Justice Stephen Breyer, another citizen of the world, recently said: "We see all the time . . . how the world really — it's trite but it's true — is growing together. The challenge (will be) whether our Constitution . . . fits into the governing documents of other nations."

Whether our Constitution fits?

For our part, we think that the Constitution and our laws belong to the American people, to be changed through and by our elected legislatures. And we think that those who assault, rape and murder American citizens should be tried in American courts under American laws.

The U.S. Supreme Court rightly decided that Medellin received full due process under American law for the rape and murder of these young Americans. But one or two Obama appointees to the Supreme Court and we could have a situation where the American criminal justice system becomes subject to an international veto.



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