Posted on Alamos board from US Consulate Hermosillo

Warden Message Mexico August 1, 2008 - Possible Demonstrations Arising from the Scheduled Execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin


The U.S. Consulate General, Hermosillo has received information that numerous demonstrations may occur in on or around August 5, 2008, to protest the scheduled execution in Texas of prisoner José Ernesto Medellín, a Mexican citizen. The Consulate urges all U.S. citizens in Mexico to be especially mindful of demonstrations taking place in their town or city, or in areas to which they intend to travel.


Travelers should be aware that various political activists abroad frequently seek to use public demonstrations to forward a variety of political objectives and that it is likely that such activists may use the occasion of anti-execution demonstrations to raise other issues involving the United States or to incite anti-U.S. sentiment in general.


The Mexican Constitution prohibits political activities by foreigners, and such actions may result in detention and/or deportation. Travelers should avoid political demonstrations and other activities that might be deemed political by the Mexican authorities. We wish to remind American citizens that even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and possibly escalate into violence. American citizens are therefore urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations if possible, and to exercise caution if in the vicinity of any demonstrations.

The Department of State urges American citizens to take responsibility for their own personal security while traveling overseas. For the latest security information, Americans traveling abroad should regularly monitor the Department's travel website, http://www.travel.state.gov, where the current Worldwide Caution, Travel Warnings, and Travel Alerts can be found. Please visit the Safety Issues section for additional safety information.

Up-to-date information on safety and security can also be obtained by calling (1-888-407-4747) toll free in the United States, or, for callers outside the United States and Canada, a regular toll line at (1-202-501-4444). These numbers are available from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S.federal holidays).

U. S. Consulate General , Hermosillo

http://hermosillo.usconsulate.gov

e-mail: hermoacs@state.gov

Phone 662/289 3500 ext 3595 or 3522 8:00 to 16:30

Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were 14 and 16 years old, respectively. They were friends who attended the same high school in Houston, Texas, Waltrip High School. On June 24, 1993, the girls spent the day together....and then died together.

They were last seen by friends about 11:15 at night, when they left a friend's apartment to head home, to beat summer curfew at 11:30. They knew they would be late if they took the normal path home, down W. 34th Street to T.C. Jester, both busy streets. They also knew they would have to pass a sexually-oriented business on that route and so decided to take a well-known shortcut down a railroad track and through a city park to Elizabeth's neighborhood.

The next morning, the girls parents began to frantically look for them, paging them on their pagers, calling their friends to see if they knew where they were, to no avail. The families filed missing persons reports with the Houston Police Department and continued to look for the girls on their own. The Ertmans and Penas gathered friends and neighbors to help them pass out a huge stack of fliers with the girls' pictures all over the Houston area, even giving them to newspaper vendors on the roadside.

Four days after the girls disappeared, a person identifying himself as 'Gonzalez' called the Crimestoppers Tips number. He told the call taker that the missing girls' bodies could be found near T.C. Jester Park at White Oak bayou. The police were sent to the scene and searched the park without finding anything. The police helicopter was flying over the park and this apparently prompted Mr. 'Gonzalez' to make a 911 call, directing the search to move to the other side of the bayou. When the police followed this suggestion, they found the badly decaying bodies of Jenny and Elizabeth.

Jennifer Ertman's dad, Randy Ertman, was about to give an interview regarding the missing girls to a local televisiojustify">Fortunately, they did manage to keep Randy from entering the woods and seeing his daughter's brutalized body and that of her friend Elizabeth, but they were unable to escape that fate themselves. I saw hardened, lifelong cops get tears in their eyes when talking about the scene more than a year later. The bodies were very badly decomposed, even for four days in Houston's brutal summer heat and humidity, particularly in the head, neck and genital areas. The medical examiner later testified that this is how she could be sure as to the horrible brutality of the rapes, beatings and murders.

The break in solving the case came from, of course, the 911 call. It was traced to the home of the brother of one of the men later sentenced to death for these murders. When the police questioned 'Gonzalez', he said that he had made the original call at his 16 year-old wife's urging. She felt sorry for the families and wanted them to be able to put their daughters' bodies to rest. 'Gonzalez' said that his brother was one of the six people involved in killing the girls, and gave police the names of all but one, the new recruit, whom he did not know.

His knowledge of the crimes came from the killers themselves, most of whom came to his home after the murders, bragging and swapping the jewelry they had stolen from the girls.

While Jenny and Elizabeth were living the last few hours of their lives, Peter Cantu, Efrain Perez, Derrick Sean O'Brien, Joe Medellin and Joe's 14 year old brother were initiating a new member, Raul Villareal, into their gang, known as the Black and Whites. Raul was an acquaintance of Efrain and was not known to the other gang members. They had spent the evening drinking beer and then "jumping in" Raul. This means that the new member was required to fight every member of the gang until he passed out and then he would be accepted as a member. Testimony showed that Raul lasted through three of the members before briefly losing consciousness.

The gang continued drinking and 'shooting the breeze' for some time and then decided to leave. Two brothers who had been with them but testified that they were not in the gang left first and passed Jenny and Elizabeth, who were unknowingly walking towards their deaths. When Peter Cantu saw Jenny and Elizabeth, he thought it was a man and a woman and told the other gang members that he wanted to jump him and beat him up. He was frustrated that he had been the one who was unable to fight Raul.

The gang members ran and grabbed Elizabeth and pulled her down the incline, off of the tracks. Testimony showed that Jenny had gotten free and could have run away but returned to Elizabeth when she cried out for Jenny to help her.

For the next hour or so, these beautiful, innocent young girls were subjected to the most brutal gang rapes that most of the investigating officers had ever encountered. The confessions of the gang members that were used at trial indicated that there was never less than 2 men on each of the girls at any one time and that the girls were repeatedly raped orally, anally and vaginally for the entire hour. One of the gang members later said during the brag session that by the time he got to one of the girls, "she was loose and sloppy." One of the boys boasted of having 'virgin blood' on him.

The 14-year-old juvenile later testified that he had gone back and forth between his brother and Peter Cantu since they were the only ones there that he really knew and kept urging them to leave. He said he was told repeatedly by Peter Cantu to "get some". He raped Jennifer and was later sentenced to 40 years for aggravated sexual assault, which was the maximum sentence for a juvenile.

When the rapes finally ended, the horror was not over. The gang members took Jenny and Elizabeth from the clearing into a wooded area, leaving the juvenile behind, saying he was "too little to watch". Jenny was strangled with the belt of Sean O'Brien, with two murderers pulling, one on each side, until the belt broke. Part of the belt was left at the murder scene, the rest was found in O'Brien's home. After the belt broke, the killers used her own shoelaces to finish their job. Medellin later complained that "the bitch wouldn't die" and that it would have been "easier with a gun". Elizabeth was also strangled with her shoelaces, after crying and begging the gang members not to kill them; bargaining, offering to give them her phone number so they could get together again.

The medical examiner testified that Elizabeth's two front teeth were knocked out of her brutalized mouth before she died and that two of Jennifer's ribs were broken after she had died. Testimony showed that the girls' bodies were kicked and their necks were stomped on after the strangulations in order to "make sure that they were really dead."

The juvenile pled guilty to his charge and his sentence will be reviewed when he turns 18, at which time he could be released. The other five were tried for capital murder in Harris County, Texas, convicted and sentenced to death. I attended all five trials with the Ertmans and know too well the awful things that they and the Penas had to hear and see in the course of seeing Justice served for their girls.

Two VERY important things in the criminal justice system have changed as a result of these murders. After the trial of Peter Cantu, Judge Bill Harmon allowed the family members to address the convicted. This had not previously been done in Texas courts and now is done as a matter of routine.

The other change came from the Texas Department of Corrections which instituted a new policy allowing victims' families the choice and right to view the execution of their perpetrators.

I had an ever-swaying opinion on the death penalty before this happened to people I know, before I watched the justice system at work firsthand. I have now come to believe that there are some crimes so heinous, so unconscionable that there can be no other appropriate punishment than the death penalty.

THE NEW WORLD DISORDER
Bush backs Mexico, rapist-murderer
International court seeks to block death penalty in Texas
Posted: October 08, 2007
11:28 am Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58033


Jose Medellin

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case Wednesday in which the Bush administration will seek to overturn the death penalty of a convicted rapist-murderer at the behest of the International Court of Justice.

Jose Medellin confessed in 1993 to participating in the rape and murder of two Houston teenagers. Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were sodomized and strangled with their shoe laces. Medellin bragged about keeping one girl's Mickey Mouse watch as a souvenir of the crime.

Medellin and four others were convicted of capital murder and sent to Texas' death row. A juvenile court sentenced Medellin's younger brother, who was 14 at the time, to 40 years in prison.

(Story continues below)

The intervention in the case by the Bush administration comes after the International Court of Justice found Medellin was not informed of his right to contact the Mexican Consulate for legal assistance.

That, according to the Hague, was a violation of a 1963 treaty known as the Vienna Convention.

"We find ourselves in an unusual position," Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz told the Houston Chronicle. "Texas is not regularly litigating against the United States. But sadly enough, the United States will appear alongside Medellin at the argument."

Medellin v. Texas will be argued Wednesday and could determine the fate of Medellin and 50 other Mexican killers on death rows in the United States, including more than a dozen in Texas. All of them say they were not told of their right to contact Mexico for legal help.

The court is expected to produce a ruling clarifying which powers reside with the president, Congress and courts, which powers belong to the federal government versus the states, and what the relationship is between international and domestic law.

The Bush administration became involved in the Medellin case in 2003 when Mexico sued the U.S. over the consular issue in the International Court of Justice at the Hague. The so-called "World Court" is the United Nations' top court for resolving international disputes.

The court ruled in Mexico's favor in late 2004 and ordered the U.S. to reconsider the Mexican inmates' murder convictions and death sentences. In February 2005, Bush announced that while he disagreed with the World Court's decision, the U.S. would comply. He ordered courts in Texas and elsewhere to review the cases.

A few days later, however, the president withdrew the U.S. from the part of the Vienna Convention that gives the World Court final say in international disputes.

The Supreme Court, which had agreed to hear Medellin's case, dismissed it later in 2005 to allow the case to play out in Texas. Last November, the all-Republican Texas Court of Criminal Appeals balked at the president's order, saying Bush had overstepped his authority.

The Texas court said the judicial branch, not the White House, should decide how to resolve the Mexican cases. It also said Medellin wasn't entitled to a new hearing because he failed to complain at his original trial about any violation of his consular rights and had therefore waived them.

Medellin appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court, which announced last May it would hear his case. His lawyer, Donald Donovan of New York, will argue this week that Bush was correct when he took action to comply with the World Court's decision.

The Bush administration, now siding with Medellin and Mexico, will try to help Donovan's team convince the justices that the Texas court is undermining the president's efforts to conduct foreign policy.

Cruz, who will argue the case for Texas, called Bush's unprecedented attempt to issue orders to the judicial branch – and the state courts in particular – "breathtaking."

"It is emphatically not the province of the president to say what the law is," he told the Houston Chronicle. "If this president's assertion of authority is upheld in this case, it opens the door for enormous mischief from presidents of either party. What might these presidents be inclined to do if they had the power to flick state laws off the books?"

Meanwhile, Randy and Sandra Ertman, the parents of one of Medellin's victims, also have weighed in. In a court brief filed on their behalf by the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, the Ertmans argue that their 14-year-old daughter's rights, and the rights of other victims, will be given short shrift if the justices further delay the "already long-overdue execution of this well-deserved sentence."

"This case has produced much lofty discussion about international law and the separation of powers. We must not forget, though, that this case is about a real crime against real people," they wrote. "Enough is enough."

Jose Ernesto Medellin execution OK'd
U.S. Supreme Court backs Texas in dispute with Bush
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-250308-jose-ernesto-medellin,0,22209.story
Tribune wire reports
1:12 PM CDT, March 25, 2008

WASHINGTON - President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered a Texas court to reopen the case of a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.

In a case that mixes presidential power, international relations and the death penalty, the court sided with Texas and rebuked Bush by a 6-3 vote.

The president was in the unusual position of siding with death row prisoner Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican citizen whom police prevented from consulting with Mexican diplomats, as provided by international treaty.

An international court ruled in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row around the United States violated the 1963 Vienna Convention, which provides that people arrested abroad should have access to their home country's consular officials. The International Court of Justice, also known as the world court, said the Mexican prisoners should have new court hearings to determine whether the violation affected their cases.

Bush, who oversaw 152 executions as Texas governor, disagreed with the decision. But he said it must be carried out by state courts because the United States had agreed to abide by the world court's rulings in such cases. The administration argued that the president's declaration is reason enough for Texas to grant Medellin a new hearing.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, disagreed. Roberts said the international court decision cannot be forced upon the states.

The president may not "establish binding rules of decision that pre-empt contrary state law," Roberts said. Neither does the treaty, by itself, require individual states to take action, he said.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.

The international court judgment should be enforced, Breyer wrote. "The nation may well break its word even though the president seeks to live up to that word," he said.

Justice John Paul Stevens, while agreeing with the outcome of the case, said nothing prevents Texas from giving Medellin another hearing even though it is not compelled to do so.

"Texas' duty in this respect is all the greater since it was Texas that -- by failing to provide consular notice in accordance with the Vienna Convention -- ensnared the United States in the current controversy," Stevens said.

Medellin was arrested a few days after the killings of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, in Houston in June 1993. He was told he had a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present, but the police did not tell him that he could request assistance from the Mexican consulate.

Medellin, who speaks, reads and writes English, gave a written confession. He was convicted of murder in the course of a sexual assault, a capital offense in Texas. A judge sentenced him to death in October 1994.

Texas acknowledged that Medellin was not told he could ask for help from Mexican diplomats, but argued that he forfeited the right because he never raised the issue at trial or sentencing. In any case, the state said, the diplomats' intercession would not have made any difference in the outcome of the case.

State and federal courts rejected Medellin's claim when he raised it on appeal.

Then, in 2003, Mexico sued the United States in the International Court of Justice in The Hague on behalf of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row in the U.S. who also had been denied access to their country's diplomats following their arrests.

Roe Wilson, a Harris County assistant district attorney who handles capital case appeals, applauded the Supreme Court decision. "This case has been in the court system a long time based on various issues, " said Wilson, whose office prosecuted Medellin. "It was a heinous murder of two young girls who were only 14 and 16. It's certainly time the case be resolved and the sentence be carried out."

Medellin, who was 18 at the time of the slayings, turned 33 earlier this month. He's now out of appeals and Wilson said her office will ask for an execution date once the Supreme Court resolves a separate case challenging lethal injections.

Donald Donovan, who argued Medellin's case to the high court, said Congress and the president could enact a law that would force Texas to comply with the World Court decision.

Mexico has no death penalty. Mexico and other opponents of capital punishment have sought to use the world court to fight for foreigners facing execution in the U.S.

Forty-four Mexican prisoners affected by the decision remain on death row around the country, including 14 in Texas. One Mexican inmate formerly facing execution now is imprisoned for life because of the Supreme Court decision outlawing capital punishment for anyone under 18 at the time the crime was committed.

Bush has since said the United States will no longer allow the World Court to judge the consular access cases because of how death penalty opponents have tried to use the international tribunal.

The case is Medellin v. Texas, 06-984.

Texas mission accomplished.