Medellin death penalty case exposes hollow Texas brand of gunslinger politics

Commentary

Medellin death penalty case exposes hollow Texas brand of gunslinger politics

July 25, 2008 10:30:00 am

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Bryan McCann [Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Austin, TX Chapter]: "Two years ago, a fellow anti-death penalty activist and I participated in a public debate on the University of Texas campus with the Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT). No one was surprised when the YCT's first plan of attack was to read – verbatim – a detailed account of the particularly gruesome gang rape and murder of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena. Their strategy represents an all too familiar method of arguing in favor of the death penalty. Who would have the audacity to argue race, class, or international law when confronted with the ghastly killings of two beautiful teenage girls? Where there is mourning and outrage, there is often little room for analysis.

The death of those two girls in 1993 was no doubt a traumatic affair for their families and Houston community. But much like the YCT used the tragedy that befell Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena at our public debate to ignore fundamental structural problems with the death penalty, Texas Governor Rick Perry is using it, coupled with his usual brand of Lone Star ethos, to ignore international law. As courageous groups like Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights have long attested, such manipulation does little to ease the pain of devastated families.

If Texas gets its way, Joe Medellin will be the second of the five men sentenced to death for the Ertman and Pena murders to be executed. However, his pending execution date of August 5 has become a topic of considerable international controversy. Though Derrick O'Brien, who was executed in 2006 for the crimes, was a native of Texas, Joe Medellin is a Mexican national. He was denied access to a Mexican consulate for legal assistance during his original trial. This flagrant affront to international law enshrined in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations prompted the International Court of Justice to issue a 2004 order to stay Medellin's execution. This prompted none other than President Bush to issue a memorandum ordering Texas to halt the executions and review the convictions of the Mexican nationals, including Medellin, mentioned in the ICJ order. When George W. Bush, former Governor of Texas, is issuing orders to honor international law and halt executions, the stakes are clearly very high.

Yet, in March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Bush had overstepped his boundaries and Texas may proceed with the execution of Medellin and other inmates forced to navigate Texas criminal law without consular advice. In response to a more recent order by the ICJ, Perry's office responded with its typical frontier zeal:

The world court [ICJ] has no standing in Texas and Texas is not bound by a ruling or edict from a foreign court. It is easy to get caught up in discussions of international law and justice and treaties. It's very important to remember that these individuals are on death row for killing our citizens.

This is familiar language from Perry's office. When the European Union issued a declaration on the eve of Texas' 400th execution since 1982, encouraging the state to place a moratorium on executions, the Office of the Governor replied:

230 years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. Texans long ago decided that the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes committed against our citizens. While we respect our friends in Europe, welcome their investment in our state and appreciate their interest in our laws, Texans are doing just fine governing Texas.

"These individuals are on death row for killing our citizens." "Texans are doing just fine governing Texas." It seems the Lone Star State's busy death row is nothing less than an homage to the spirit of American and Texas independence, international law be damned. Such populist appeals resonate all too well with what I believe to be one of the finest articulations of how capital punishment operates in American society. Legal scholar Austin Sarat writes, "State killing is part of a strategy of governance that makes us fearful and dependent on the illusion of state protection, that divides rather than unites, that promises simple solutions to complex problems."

The death penalty in Texas and elsewhere requires simplicity. There is no need to get "caught up in discussions of international law and justice and treaties" when we can view the poisoning of convicted criminals as a testament to our rugged collective identity. As we quickly learned at our public debate two years ago, the death penalty cannot withstand the slightest amount of complexity. The closer one looks, the more unsightly this depraved institution becomes. Whether it be the risk of making Americans abroad more vulnerable to prosecution because of their government's disdain for international law or the well documented socio-economic disparities that permeate the nation's death rows, the complexities of capital punishment are ultimately its undoing. Thus, Rick Perry's usual brand of gunslinger politics — all too similar to that of his predecessor — is about much more than his own Texan roots. It is the lifeblood of a cruel and ineffective state sanction that allows him to convince ordinary Texans that he is on our side. When Texas ranks 37th in spending on public education, it is little surprise that Perry and his colleagues cling so dearly to this irreparably broken strategy of governance."

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Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.