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The real Medellin Cartel
Saturday April 12, 2008
By Ellis Washington
The president's authority to act, as with the exercise of any governmental power, "must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself."~ Chief Justice John Roberts, Medellin v. Texas (2008)
For those of you who do not follow the sometimes dry recitations emanating from the Supreme Court as I do, nor really appreciate the bona fide conservative justices America is blessed with like—Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Scalia, this column should give you pause.
On March 28, the Supreme Court handed down a magnificent victory defending America's sovereignty and the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution over international treaties, international law and the United Nations in the case Medellin v. Texas (2008).
Medellin v. Texas held while an international treaty may constitute an international commitment, it is not binding domestic law unless Congress has enacted statutes implementing it or unless the treaty itself is "self-executing"; that decisions of the International Court of Justice are not binding domestic law; and that, absent an act of Congress or constitutional authority, the president of the United States lacks the power to enforce international treaties or decisions of the International
Here is the tragic narrative regarding the case:
It was June 1993 when 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman and 16-year-old Elizabeth Pena fatefully decided to take a shortcut home along a railroad trestle. There, they encountered Jose Ernesto Medellin and other members of a vicious Houston street gang. Medellin and his fellow savages repeatedly raped the girls, murdered them by strangulation, and then discarded their bodies, which were finally found days later.Medellin was soon arrested. He was 18 at the time and had lived most of his life in the United States. The arresting officers gave him standard Miranda warnings, advising him that he was under no obligation to speak with them, that any statements he made could be used against him and that, whether or not he chose to speak, he had a right to have a lawyer – paid for by the state – present and assisting him.
As many defendants do, he waived those rights. Within three hours, he had confessed to, among other things, murder in the course of a sexual assault. The people of the sovereign state of Texas, through their elected representatives, have made that crime a capital offense. Given that the death penalty is expressly mentioned in the Constitution – including three times in the Fifth Amendment alone – there is no plausible argument that Texas' policy is unconstitutional.
Medellin, however, was a national of Mexico. Consequently, under Article 36 of a treaty known as the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the police were obligated to notify him of his right to have his consulate advised of his arrest. The police failed to fulfill this duty, but this dereliction was patently immaterial. The treaty says the notification should occur "without delay"; but this term does not have a clear meaning. It has been interpreted to require notice within one-to-three days, and it has never been understood to mandate that notice occur before an arrested suspect is questioned.
It is important to understand that treaties are not "self-executing." That is, they don't form rights that persons can enforce in courts; they are, instead, agreements between governments. The government's failure to give notice to the Mexican Consulate wouldn't have made any difference in Medellin's case. He had given police a complete confession lasting hours before notice was necessary. Had the police given consular notice according to the treaty, they would still have obtained the confession, and Medellin would still have been convicted and sentenced to death.
Remember, when the World Court hears disputes it is between countries. In the Medellin case, the parties, called an Avena, were Mexico and the United States, not Medellin and the other murderers. America's treaty commitments were merely to authorize the World Court to decide whether a country was in agreement with its consular duties. The World Court has no authority to order American courts to remediate individual defendants.
The United States, in its role of the judicial branch, has the sole determination of what the law is. The president, in his chief role in implementing foreign policy, is given extensive autonomy regarding the ratification of treaties. However, the Supreme Court has the final say on the interpretation of treaties and their legal effects under constitutional law.
For example, in its 2006 Sanchez-Llamas case, the Supreme Court rejected the World Court's interpretation of the Vienna Convention, holding that states were free to enforce their procedural default rules. That is exactly the decisive question in Medellin. In the absence of controlling legislation by Congress, the president cannot accept the World Court's decision and, in effect, overrule the Supreme Court.
In the final analysis, the case is about the freedom of Texans to govern themselves, to put sadistic murderers to death if that is what they choose democratically to do, as long as they adhere to American constitutional procedures in carrying out that policy choice. Sure, it offends Mexicans, Europeans, international law professors and a motley collection of jurists who see themselves as a supra-sovereign tribunal. But that is not a basis for the president to interfere.
Liberals and transnational progressives hate the death penalty. These people will support any cause that impedes execution, no matter how evil the acts. That's why these radicals came out in force and defended Medellin, that vile murderer who shouldn't have been in America anyway.
Who is the real Medellin Cartel? No, not the notorious Columbian cartel who through Mexico and a network of surrogate countries and criminal gangs are responsible for shipping billions of dollars in cocaine annually into America, devastating our country, above all our big cities where poor blacks and Hispanics are trapped in a hellish inner-city existence exacerbated by gangs driving out businesses, peddling drugs and killing each other and innocent bystanders over "territory" throughout America.
The real Medellin Cartel are homegrown socialists, liberals and progressives who have unreasonable hatred of America and the heroic and transcendent ideas and ideals she has stood for since her founding, including their contempt of the death penalty. These domestic traitors will use every legal artifice and sophism to deceive gullible Americans to give up sovereignty that was bought by the blood of her own people and give it to a bunch of U.N. bureaucrats or political hacks from some socialist European country or Third World hellhole.
Medellin v. Texas shows us that presidents have no authority to amend state procedural law – treaty or no treaty.
Thank God once again for our ever vigilant sentinels at the gates of the Supreme Court, preserving our constitutional liberties and keeping the liberal, progressive, socialist and anarchist barbarians at bay – Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts.
Ellis Washington, former editor at The Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including "The Inseparability of Law and Morality:
The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law" (2002), "Beyond the Veil:
Essays in the Dialectical Style of Socrates" and He has just completed the manuscript to his latest book, "The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust" (2007).
Washington's latest book, "The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust," can be pre-ordered by calling 800-462-6420, promotion code "UPREPUB."
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