A total of 21 bodies were left in various streets around Morelia, the capital of the western Mexican state of Michoacan, with the majority of the victims shot, tortured and dumped with messages by them, state prosecutors said Thursday.

Details.

For those interested in tracking what is going on along the Mexican border, there are a couple of websites that collect news articles on it.

Borderland Beat

LA Times - Mexico Under Siege

Thousands of innocent people are being indiscriminately killed in Mexico by narco-traffickers, but Texas is supposed to stop the execution of a Mexican national who raped and killed a teen-aged girl because a bunch of anti-death penalty officials say an alleged failure to comply with Leal's consular notification rights endangers Americans in Mexico?

The article/argument

Um ... didn't they already try this argument with Medellin? You know, that Americans would be endangered if we executed him? I guess I missed all our citizens who were mistreated, abused, and railroaded by the Mexican gov't as a result of that execution.

Sometimes the lack of critical thinking (or questioning) by the mainstream media when it comes to this stuff is maddening.

The most gratifying part of being a prosecutor is participating in the fight for justice. And it is a fight, often against frustratingly irrational arguments that seek to camouflage the truth. In this case, for example, the defense, almost two decades after all courts have found that the defendant had a fair trial and has been found guilty and deserving of the death penalty by the highest legal standard available in the law, present a new, international argument to delay the execution.

Prosecutors know that the answer is to return to the facts, so here they are:

Leal, 38, from Monterrey, Mexico, was convicted for the 1994 rape and bludgeoning death of Adria Sauceda, 16, whose naked body was found on a dirt road about 100 yards from a party she and Leal attended. Her head was bashed in with a rock and she had been sexually assaulted with a stick.

Leal told authorities Adria had accidentally hit her head on the rock as the two struggled while he tried to take her home.

So, now we know that a grown man, who should well know better, while here illegally, committed a depraved act that deprived a young, innocent girl of her personal safety and, ultimately, her life, through a dreadful and violent act involving a rock and a stick. Then he revealed his completely corrupt nature by lying and continuing to deny any responsibility.

Balance against that the theory that all would be different if only the defendant, who no doubt had access to American-funded, court-appointed legal counsel, had been able to call and talk to his Mexican consul to tell yet more lies.

I rest my case.

[This message was edited by JB on 06-12-11 at .]



[This message was edited by JB on 06-12-11 at .]

Here is language from the federal writ, denying relief:

While largely circumstantial, the prosecution's evidence introduced at the guilt-innocence phase of petitioner's trial was compelling. It was undisputed that petitioner was the last person seen with Adria Sauceda when she was alive. After falsely asserting that he knew Adria's family and knew where she lived, petitioner represented to at least two individuals that he would take her home. Petitioner drove away from the party at Vincent Street with an intoxicated Adria in his vehicle. Adria's nude, bloodied, battered body was found shortly after petitioner's brother and sister made a particularly dramatic appearance at the party, demanding to know what had happened between petitioner and a girl. Petitioner admitted to police that he had fought with Adria, he pushed her down, she fell and did not get back up, and he abandoned her while she was unconscious and bleeding from the face and head. There was no evidence that petitioner made any attempt to obtain medical care for the injured and unconscious sixteen-year-old. In addition, forensic dental evidence strongly suggested that petitioner's teeth were responsible for the bite marks on Adria's body. The autopsy performed on Adria revealed massive injuries wholly inconsistent with anything other than a deliberate assault, including multiple blows to her face and head with a blunt object, as well as numerous blows delivered to her body by an object with an edge. Given the foregoing forensic evidence, this was obviously a case of murder. The stick protruding from Adria's body and the associated injuries to her vagina established practically as a matter of law that she had been the victim of a sexual assault while she was still alive. Thus, her death was also a capital murder. Under such circumstances, there is no reasonable probability that any rational jury would have acquitted petitioner.

Right on schedule ...

Texas Is Pressed to Spare Mexican Citizen on Death Row

quote:

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�For this,� the lawyers wrote in their brief seeking a stay, �the state built its case on junk science, willful ignorance and profoundly problematic DNA evidence.�

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Is this same line not included in every brief written on behalf of a death row inmate? I just figured it was straight out of ProDocs.