Posted on Tue, May. 06, 2008

Harris County judge sets execution date

By DAVE MONTGOMERY

Star-Telegram Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A Harris County judge Monday set an Aug. 5 execution date for Jose Ernesto Medellin, the central figure in an international dispute over U.S. treaty obligations. Attorneys for Medellin, a Mexican citizen, said they will turn to Congress to stop the execution.

State District Judge Caprice Cosper set the execution date for Medellin, who has been on Texas' Death Row for nearly 15 years for the gang rape and murder of two teenage girls who stumbled into a gang initiation in Houston.

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution by rejecting Medellin's appeal in a 6-3 ruling in March.

Medellin's attorneys argued that Texas failed to abide by an international treaty requiring that people arrested abroad have access to their country's consular officials. Medellin has repeatedly asserted that he was denied access to Mexican representatives.

Medellin, handcuffed and wearing a lime green jail jumpsuit, stood impassively between his attorneys as Cosper read the order. Attorneys for Medellin and the Mexican government urged her to delay setting the execution date.

"This is a case whose effects go far beyond this courtroom," said Sandra Babcock, one of Medellin's attorneys.

Donald Donovan, another Medellin attorney, said: "This country is committed to the rule of law. We have a legal obligation. We should comply with it."

Defense lawyers, warning that Americans abroad could be in legal jeopardy if Medellin is executed, wanted the legal adviser to the Mexican foreign minister to speak. Cosper refused.

"I did not intend to hold a hearing," she said. "I did intend to set an execution date."

Roe Wilson, assistant Harris County district attorney, said that state and federal courts reviewed Medellin's case and that he had been given "the right of every American citizen."

"The defense is trying to create a climate of sensationalism," Wilson said.

Medellin, a one-time gang member, was cast in an unlikely legal alliance with President Bush, who cited the treaty obligations in calling on Texas courts to grant new hearings for Medellin and other foreign nationals awaiting executions in the United States.

But the Supreme Court, in sustaining a lower court ruling, said Bush overstepped his authority in ordering the hearings.

Donovan, of New York, and Babcock, of Chicago, said they will ask Congress to force compliance with the treaty. Under that treaty, which created the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations in 1963, a detained foreign national in any of the 166 participating countries is entitled to contact his or her consular officials "without delay."

The Bush administration ordered Texas and other states with condemned Mexican prisoners to grant new hearings to comply with the World Court ruling.

This report includes material by Associated Press reporter Michael Graczyk reporting from Houston.