John Bolton |
Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton says the Bush administration is caving in to global opinion by siding with Mexico and the International Court of Justice in their attempt to overturn the death penalty of an illegal alien convicted of raping and murdering two teenage girls.
It's "a bad mistake, but one of many mistakes, I'm sad to say, the administration has made recently," Bolton said in an interview with nationally syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in the case of Jose Medellin, who confessed in 1993 to participating in the rape and murder of Houston teenagers Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena. The girls 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. The intervention in the case by the Bush administration comes after the International Court of Justice in the Hague found Medellin was not informed of his right to contact the Mexican Consulate for legal assistance. The cases of some 50 other Mexicans on death row could also be affected.
Bolton insisted the U.S. has no obligation to the world court in this case.
"It is ridiculous," he said. "The Vienna Convention on consular relations does not create rights personal to the individual. It's a state-to-state agreement."
U.S. lawmakers who signed the treaty did not believe they were creating a way for criminals on death row to "get around our judicial system," Bolton explained to Ingraham.
"It you had said that to the Senate at the time this convention came up, they'd have laughed at you," he said.
The criminals' argument, Bolton said, boils down to insisting they have not had sufficient due process.
"They haven't had enough due process? They've had the full panoply of constitutional protection, and now they're trying to create something else," Bolton asserted.
"They've used every single possibility within our criminal justice system to get themselves out of jail, and every one has failed," he continued. "Now they're pulling this rabbit out of a hat, and it would just be outrageous if it were allowed to succeed."
Supporters of the administration on this issue contend the U.S. must back the world court in order to protect Americans abroad.
Bolton says that's comparing apples and oranges. A situation in which an American might need help, he said, would be "somebody being thrown in jail in some Banana republic somewhere where we need to get access."
"It's is just a completely separate situation," he said.
Jose Medellin |
The Bush administration became involved in the Medellin case in 2003 when Mexico sued the U.S. over the consular issue in the world court, the U.N.'s 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 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 U.S. 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.
Then 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, argued Wednesday that Bush was correct when he took action to comply with the world court's decision.
