This past Wednesday, July, 16th, the HAGUE - The U.N.'s highest court, ordered the United States to stay the executions of five Mexicans on Texas death row pending review of their cases. Including that of Jose Medellin (pictured above), scheduled to be executed within a couple of weeks.
John Bellinger III, the U.S. legal adviser, told the UN that the federal government had gone to "extraordinary lengths" to carry out the World Court's directive and to intercede with the state courts.
Earlier, President Bush issued a directive to the state courts to abide by the decision and also asked Texas specifically to review Jose Medellin's case ahead of his planned Aug. 5 execution.
Those steps were "highly unusual," Bellinger said. "It almost never happens that the federal government enters an appearance in state court proceedings."
However, Texas refused, and in March the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 6-3 vote that Bush lacked the authority to compel state courts to comply with the judgment from The Hague.
Wednesday's ruling comes less than three weeks before the first of the death row inmates, Jose Medellin, is scheduled for execution by lethal injection in Texas for taking part in the gang rape and murder of two teenage girls 15 years ago.
In 1993, two young girls, 16 y/o Elizabeth Pena and 14 y/o Jennifer Ertman took a shortcut home and came upon a gang initiation involving Jose Medellin, Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal. The three gang members raped and sodomized them both and when they were finished they beat and kicked them both to death.
Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Attorney General Michael Mukasey have jointly written to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, urging him to review Medellin's case, Bellinger said.
The Hague is informally known as “the World Court,” and the tribunal is the U.N.'s judicial arm for resolving disputes among nations, and although its decisions are supposedly binding and final, but it has no enforcement powers.
As Al Gore once famously said, “There is NO overriding legal authority (for U.S. law).”
John Bellinger III, the U.S. legal adviser, told the UN that the federal government had gone to "extraordinary lengths" to carry out the World Court's directive and to intercede with the state courts.
Earlier, President Bush issued a directive to the state courts to abide by the decision and also asked Texas specifically to review Jose Medellin's case ahead of his planned Aug. 5 execution.
Those steps were "highly unusual," Bellinger said. "It almost never happens that the federal government enters an appearance in state court proceedings."
However, Texas refused, and in March the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 6-3 vote that Bush lacked the authority to compel state courts to comply with the judgment from The Hague.
Wednesday's ruling comes less than three weeks before the first of the death row inmates, Jose Medellin, is scheduled for execution by lethal injection in Texas for taking part in the gang rape and murder of two teenage girls 15 years ago.
In 1993, two young girls, 16 y/o Elizabeth Pena and 14 y/o Jennifer Ertman took a shortcut home and came upon a gang initiation involving Jose Medellin, Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal. The three gang members raped and sodomized them both and when they were finished they beat and kicked them both to death.
Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Attorney General Michael Mukasey have jointly written to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, urging him to review Medellin's case, Bellinger said.
The Hague is informally known as “the World Court,” and the tribunal is the U.N.'s judicial arm for resolving disputes among nations, and although its decisions are supposedly binding and final, but it has no enforcement powers.
As Al Gore once famously said, “There is NO overriding legal authority (for U.S. law).”
