(Supreme) Court Takes Death Penalty Case

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Court Takes Death Penalty Case

Monday April 30, 2007 3:16 PM

By MARK SHERMAN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court stepped into a Texas
death penalty case Monday that mixes Bush administration claims
of executive power with the role of international law in state
court proceedings.

The case accepted by the justices for argument this fall concerns
the fate of Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican national who was
sentenced in 1994 to die for the rapes and killings of two teenage
girls.

The state wants to go ahead with Medellin's execution, despite a
ruling from the International Court of Justice in The Hague that
the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners
violated the 1963 Vienna Convention because they were denied
legal help available to them under the treaty.

The pact requires consular access for Americans detained abroad
and foreigners arrested in the United States. Mexico sued the
United States in the international court, alleging the prisoners'
rights had been violated.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6597816,00.html

[maddezmom]

1. so now they are for international laws

:eyes:

[Scooter24]

2. Only if it's in favor of them of course.

If it wasn't for Bush trying to reserve what little power he has left, he would have just left this case alone.

[Igel]

3. That's not it at all.

'Unusual for a death penalty case, the administration is siding with Medellin in asserting that the president's primacy in conducting foreign policy is being challenged.

'President Bush ordered new state court hearings for the defendants based on the international court ruling. But a Texas appeals court said the president exceeded his authority by intruding into the affairs of the independent judiciary.'

And it's worthy of going before SCOTUS: Are treaties signed by the Federal government binding on state governments' judiciaries and executive branches? Can the Federal government sign away rights reserved to the states? Can a president order a state judiciary to do something?

This has been bouncing around in various forms. For example, NAFTA's been found to overrule states' environmental protection laws--but then again, the federal government can make laws that overrule states' laws, and the state-level laws affect interstate commerce and international trade, so that's not a big stretch--even if I did find it annoying. But can the Federal government stipulate that foreign nationals get consular access in state-level cases?

That should be some interesting argumentation.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Supreme Court tosses sentence of longest-serving death row inmate

April 30, 2007, 12:47PM
Supreme Court tosses sentence of longest-serving death row inmate

By MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

HOUSTON — A U.S. Supreme Court decision Monday ensures Texas' longest-serving condemned prisoner is no nearer to execution after more than 31 years on death row.

The high court sent the case of Ronald Chambers, 52, to a lower federal appeals court in line with a decision last week in another Texas death row case where justices ruled 5-4 that questions used by jurors to decide the death sentence were not proper.

The questions — part of jury instructions used by a Dallas County jury that decided Chambers should die — were the same as the ones ruled invalid last week, meaning Monday's ruling was not unexpected.

In those cases, condemned prisoner LaRoyce Lathair Smith, convicted of the 1991 torture-slaying of a fast-food worker in Dallas, won a punishment reversal from the high court. In a similar ruling, the justices also overturned the death sentences of Brent Ray Brewer, convicted of fatally stabbing an Amarillo man during a robbery in 1990, and Jalil Abdul-Kabir, convicted in 1988 of strangling a San Angelo man during a robbery.

The cases all stemmed from jury instructions no longer used. Under those instructions, the Supreme Court found jurors were not allowed to give sufficient weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life sentence rather than death.

More:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4761442.html