Mexican-born killer executed in Texas

Elizabeth Pena, 16, and Jennifer Ertman, 14, both of Houston, were gang raped, beaten and strangled in June 1993. Their remains were found four days later. The brother of one of the gang members, disgusted to learn about his sibling's involvement in the attack, tipped police, leading to the arrests.

Medellin, who was 18 at the time, was one of five to get the death penalty for the girls' deaths.

One companion, Derrick O'Brien, was executed two years ago. Another, Peter Cantu, described as the ringleader of the group, is awaiting execution but a date has not been set.

"Looking forward every day to that," said Adolfo Pena, Elizabeth's father.

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Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said it sent a note of protest to the State Department about Medellin's case.

The statement said officials "were concerned for the precedent that (the execution) may create for the rights of Mexican nationals who may be detained in that country."

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For some reason, the Bush administration and the Supreme Court tried to put a stop to this, even though everyone knows that death penalty convictions take years to be completed. There are mandatory appeals and all sorts of ways for criminals to slip out from the reaches of the Death Chair or The Needle (take your pick), but this punk wanna-be gangbanger and four or five of his buddies gangraped and killed two innocent women as part of a gang initiation.

Why not just shoot these morons on site? Why discuss The Vienna Convention or any other decades-old document when basic human rights were violated? The sad part of this whole ordeal is that Mexican Authorities were actually trying to defend these low-lifes. Just another example of why we should cut our ties to Mexico and heavily penalize any corporation found to be using illegal immigrants as cheap labor.

The real human rights violation has nothing to do with the death penalty and everything to do with the innocent victims. Once you rape & kill another human being to further your reputation in those little clubhouses that ethnic groups like to call "gangs", technicalities lose their meaning, and you lose all your privileges. I'm glad a nationalistic-minded state like Texas still exists to remind us of how important it is to keep our streets clean & our people safe.

Death may or may not provide finality to the families of victims of such heinous crimes, but the death penalty is important in that society can rid itself of people who don't contribute to society and who are too dangerous to even be held in our prison system.