|
 But there is one part of the story that goes untold. The Medellin
v. Texas case, decided when Cruz was the state's solicitor general,
set the stage for years of diplomatic tension between the United
States and its southern neighbor.
Mexico has publicly protested U.S. executions of its citizens over
the years, but interviews with diplomats and reviews of official
Mexican government communiqués reveal that the turmoil caused by the
Medellin case ran deeper, coming up at nearly every meeting between
the United States and Mexico and leading to an official protest to
the United Nations Security Council in 2014.
Given the level of frustration, Cruz's role in the court battle
raises questions about U.S.-Mexico relations if he were to beat
billionaire Donald Trump to the Republican nomination and win the
U.S. presidential election in November.
"I think relations would be complicated with a President Cruz,” said
Sergio Alcocer, who was Mexico's deputy foreign minister responsible
for North America between 2012-2015.
 Alcocer praised Cruz as intelligent and pragmatic but said the
senator was too inflexible on issues like immigration and the death
penalty. “Cruz takes certain positions that are very clearly
defined. And he's much more conservative, much more dogmatic than
Trump," Alcocer said.
A Cruz campaign official did not respond to requests for comment. In
Mexico City, a foreign ministry spokesman said Mexico had no
preference among the U.S. presidential candidates and would not
comment on the election.
In the Medellin case, Cruz defended the death sentence a Texas court
imposed on Mexican citizen Jose Ernesto Medellin after he was
convicted in 1994 for his role in the gang rape and strangling of
two teenage girls in a Houston park.
In 2004, the International Court of Justice of the United Nations
ruled that Texas and other states had violated the Vienna Convention
by failing to notify Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row of
their right to contact the Mexican consulate after arrest. President
George W. Bush ordered Texas and other states to review the
sentences.
Cruz argued that, while the United States had submitted to the
international court's decisions, the White House could not implement
an international agreement that required states to change their
court procedures without action by Congress. The Supreme Court
agreed in a 6-3 decision.
Winning the case raised Cruz’s profile in conservative circles. He
has recently said he would appoint justices who would narrowly
interpret the Constitution - as he did in the Medellin case - a
crucial talking point in the election following the death of Supreme
Court conservative icon Antonin Scalia.
"It was an unusual thing at the time for the state of Texas to be
standing up against the president of the United States in front of
the Supreme Court, particularly when that president was a Texan and
a Republican and the former governor of this state,” Cruz told
cheering supporters at a Houston rally in February, one of the many
times he has brought up the case.
 MEXICO PROTESTS
The Supreme Court ruling removed a potential legal barrier to three
more executions of Mexican nationals in Texas who had been part of
the same international court case as Medellin, even as U.S. allies
such as the European Union and Switzerland criticized what they saw
as ongoing treaty violations.
Mexico pressed U.S. officials and Congress to follow the
international court’s directive and require states to review death
sentences where people had been denied consular access.
"The issue came up as one of the top few issues (Mexico) raised in
almost every bilateral meeting we had," said Harold Hongju Koh, who
was legal adviser to the U.S. State Department from 2009-2013.
Alcocer, the former Mexican deputy foreign minister, confirmed the
issue of consular access was raised during negotiations on other
cross-border issues like the extradition of criminals.
[to top of second column] |
"It's not resolved, and it's something that Mexico needs to keep
insisting on,” he said in an interview.
Mexican officials said both the Bush and Obama administrations had
been open to working on the issue. U.S. State Department officials
supported consular-access legislation introduced in the Senate, but
that was not enough to spur Congress to resolve the issue.
Texas executed Medellin in August 2008, five months after the
Supreme Court decision, drawing swift criticism from the United
Nations court.
Three years later, as Texas prepared to execute another Mexican
national who had not received consular access, Mexico's
then-ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, wrote to U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying the action would
"seriously jeopardize" cooperation on a range of issues.
"It serves neither the United States nor the Mexico-U.S.
relationship if the U.S. cannot live up to its treaty obligations,"
said the letter, which was reviewed by Reuters.
In 2013, Mexico warned Washington in another letter that the
executions of Mexican nationals who had been denied consular access
would mean "our whole forward-looking bilateral engagement could be
questioned."
A year later the government wrote to the president of the United
Nations’ Security Council expressing indignation over the executions
of Mexican citizens in violation of the international court
directive.
Sarukhan, the former Mexican ambassador, said Mexico had few options
to put pressure on the United States without harming cooperation in
other areas.
"March 31st marks now 12 years since the decision was rendered and
the United States is yet to comply with its international
obligations," the government said in a statement, responding to
Reuters questions about the Medellin case and Cruz's involvement in
it.
Critics of the Medellin ruling, and Cruz's boasts about it, say
Texas could have simply reviewed the sentences as the international
court had asked.
“Texas could have provided that remedy 20 times over in the time
that it took to litigate that case up and down through the Texas
courts and the Supreme Court,” said Sandra Babcock, a law professor
at Cornell University who was one of Medellin’s attorneys. “The
long-term damage, the reputational damage to the United States is
still ongoing.”
But Cruz’s supporters dismiss such criticism. His job as solicitor
general was to defend Texas, not to worry about the international
implications, they say.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a former attorney general who was Cruz's
boss at the time of the Medellin case, introduced the presidential
hopeful at the February rally in Houston.
"He fought against the United Nations, the world court and the
United States of America itself to defend Texas’ sovereignty,"
Abbott said to cheers.
(Reporting by Emily Stephenson in Washington and Dave Graham in
Mexico City; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Ross Colvin)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
