Justice Served Not Yet

I am furious:

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58033

I am a proponent of the Vienna Convention and World Law. And somebody really dropped the ball on this one.

Why wasn't this man informed that as a Mexican national, he had the right to contact the Mexican Consulate? Why didn't someone drive down to the Mexican Consulate and bring an attorney to him, whether he wanted one or not?

This is probably one of the most disturbing murder cases I've run across. Five boys (or young men), as part of a gang initiation, raped, sodomize, and strangled two girls (fourteen and fifteen) in a park in Houston in 1993. Four were sentenced to death. One was a minor and sentenced to forty years. The first execution took place last year.

This young man in question bragged to others about keeping one of the victim's Mickey Mouse watch as a souvenir.

I cannot think of a situation in which the death penalty was more appropriate. We are not talking about a situation in which DNA evidence was questionable, witnesses shady, etc. He confessed. Everyone confessed. There wasn't much point not. The group bragged about it and a relative called the authorities a few days after the fact.

I don't know what the options are at this point.

A new trial?

That's a waste of tax money. Days and days of presentations so that a jury can spend a whopping twenty seconds in a secret ballot vote, determining that this man is the poster child for execution?

Set him free?

Only if he goes back to Mexico and becomes their problem.

I hate this is happening to the families of those girls. They've been through Hell and back again, only for this to happen. Granted, I'm not a big proponent of the death penalty, but this is one of those moments in which it's hard to argue against it. Those families are the true victims in this case.