The Death Penalty and Undocumented Immigrants

There has been a lot of news about the death penalty recently. As many of you may know, a Mexican immigrant, Jose Medillin, was put to death on Tuesday after being sentenced for killing two females in 1995. A second man, Heliberto Chi, from Honduras, was set to suffer lethal injection tonight but was granted a stay due to his rights being violated under the Vienna Convention Treaty. According to the story, because both men are undocumented immigrants Texas violated international law in both of these cases and were not tries or sentenced in a just manner. In the case of Medillin, even President Bush had asked the case to be reviewed, however earlier this year the Supreme Court had ruled that neither the president nor international courts could force Texas to wait to execute.

Texas performs more death penalty executions than any other state in the nation. In 2007, of the 42 executions in the US, 26 were performed in Texas, with the next highest being in Oklahoma and Alabama with 3 a piece.

We thought this story held high relevance for issues we talk about quite often as part of PeaceJam (Death Penalty, immigration, human rights). What are your thoughts?

You can read the entire story from the Houston Chronicle