It's official. Texas has just executed Humberto Leal by lethal injection. Leal was found guilty of the brutal rape and bludgeoning (repeated blows to the head with a chunk of asphalt) of a sixteen-year-old girl in 1994. May God have mercy on his soul, because I cannot.
The Obama Department of Justice tried to stay the execution by a direct appeal to the Supreme Court, which was rejected (as was the identical attempt in 2008 with Medellín vs Texas) due to the finding that international law has no binding effect unless Congress enacts US laws to enforce it, and the President has no power to enforce such international laws or treaties absent action by Congress. I expect that the DoJ was already aware of Medellín, but persisted in the appeal for political reasons.
Likewise, Obama publically appealed to Governor Rick Perry. Here as well, Obama surely knew that Perry would reject the appeal, because Perry also fought President Bush over the same issue with the afore-mentioned Medellín – and won.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are welcome and discussion is open and encouraged. I expect that there will be some occasional disagreement (heaven knows why) or welcome clarification and embellishment, and such are freely solicited.
Consider that all such comments are in the public domain and are expected to be polite, even while contentious. I will delete comments which are ad hominem, as well as those needlessly profane beyond the realm of sputtering incredulity in reaction to some inanity, unless attributed to a quote.
Links to other sources are fine so long as they further the argument or expand on the discussion. All such comments and links are the responsibility of the commenter, and the mere presence herein does not necessarily constitute my agreement.
I will also delete all comments that link to a commercial site.