Four months after losing his case at the U.S. Supreme Court, a Mexican citizen facing execution next week in Texas asked the justices Friday for a last-minute reprieve.
Jose Medellin, set to die Tuesday for his participation in the gang rape and beating deaths of two Houston teenage girls, said the high court should block his lethal injection until Texas grants him a new hearing to comply with an international court ruling.
The state has so far refused, and the Supreme Court ruled in March that neither President George W. Bush nor the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, can force Texas' hand. But Medellin says the U.S. Congress or the Texas legislature should be given a chance to pass a law ordering a new hearing before he can be executed.
Four Democratic lawmakers have introduced such a bill in Congress, but it probably won't be acted upon this year. The Texas Legislature does not meet again until January.
Texas officials remained determined to go ahead with next week's scheduled execution.
"We don't care where you're from," Allison Castle, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, said Friday. "If you commit a despicable crime like this in Texas, you'll face the ultimate penalty under our laws."
"The truth is, Texas is not bound by a foreign court's ruling," Castle said.
Medellin is one of roughly 50 Mexicans on death rows around the nation, including about a dozen in Texas, who contend they were denied prompt access to their country's consular officials after being arrested in the United States. Such access is guaranteed by an international treaty known as the Vienna Convention.
On Thursday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, rejected similar arguments from Medellin, who was 18 when the two girls, Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, were killed.
In a concurring opinion to the court's ruling, Judge Cathy Cochran said Medellin, who was brought to the United States when he was 3, indeed was a Mexican citizen. But she said he had lived in the U.S. for 15 of his 18 years and spoke fluent English even though he never obtained or sought American citizenship.
"His claim is that no one informed him of his right to contact the Mexican consulate," she wrote. "This is true. It also is true that he was never denied access to the Mexican consulate.
"The problem is that he apparently never told any law enforcement or judicial official that he was a Mexican citizen until some four years after his conviction."
In 2004, the World Court said death row prisoners like Medellin should have new court hearings to determine whether the absence of contact with consular officials affected their cases. Bush, though disagreeing with the ruling, said the United States was obligated by treaty to comply with it and ordered the states to follow suit.
Texas refused to comply, which is how Medellin's case initially ended up before the Supreme Court.
Bush was in the unusual position of siding with the death row inmate against the state he previously served as governor, and after having overseen 152 executions in Texas, the most active death penalty state in the U.S.
The World Court last month ordered U.S. authorities to do everything possible to halt the executions scheduled in Texas of Medellin and four other Mexicans until their cases are reviewed. The Bush administration has said it expected the World Court's order to have little impact.
Evidence showed the girls were gang raped for more than an hour, then were kicked and beaten before being strangled. A tip from the brother of one of the gang members led police to arrest Medellin and his companions.
Two of the gang members, Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal, had their death sentences commuted to life in prison when the Supreme Court barred executions for those who were 17 at the time of their crimes.
One of the gang members, Derrick O'Brien, was executed last year. Peter Cantu, described by authorities as the gang's ringleader, remains on death row without an execution date.
A sixth person, Medellin's brother, Vernancio, was 14 at the time and received a 40-year prison term. for his role in the crime.
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Associated Press reporter Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this story.
