Is the Associated Press another propaganda outlet for US wingnuts who justify state killing and don’t recognize Mexico’s sovereignty? Apparently. Tonight AP has a story that Mexico thwarts US death penalty cases because Mexico won’t extradite US fugitives unless the US signs on the dotted line that it will not execute them. This isn’t news. Mexico’s policy has been in place for thirty (30) years.
Well, maybe demanding an assurance that the extradited person won’t be killed is unusual? It isn’t.
Other countries, including France and Canada, also demand such “death assurances” [that the extradited person won’t be executed]. But the problem is more common with Mexico, since it is often a quick drive from the crime scene for a large portion of the United States. /snip
The Justice Department said death assurances from foreign countries are fairly common, but it had no immediate numbers. State Department officials said Mexico extradited 73 suspects to the U.S. in 2007. Most were wanted on drug or murder charges.
No, the point of the story isn’t the policy. It’s US exceptionalism and how Mexico should cave in to US barbarism and the death penalty and return fugitives slaves for execution:
“We find it extremely disturbing that the Mexican government would dictate to us, in Arizona, how we would enforce our laws at the same time they are complaining about our immigration laws,” said Barnett Lotstein, special assistant to the prosecutor in Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix.
“Even in the most egregious cases, the Mexican authorities say, `No way,’ and that’s not justice. That’s an interference of Mexican authorities in our judicial process in Arizona.” /snip
“If you can get to Mexico – if you have the means – it’s a way of escaping the death penalty,” said Issac Unah, a University of North Carolina political science professor. /snip
John Walsh, host of TV’s long-running “America’s Most Wanted,” … said the delays and death-penalty compromises needed to get fugitives returned can be heartbreaking for victims’ families
“It’s not about revenge. It’s not so much about closure. It’s about justice,” he said.
Lotstein, the prosecutor’s assistant in Phoenix, said the county has agreed to drop the death penalty in a number of cases: “The option we have is absolutely no justice, or partial justice.”
Is the point of the article that US justice is somehow were synonymous with state killing? Is the point of the article that Mexico is somehow obstructing US state killing?
No. Those are incidental points. The real point, the Britney Spears size point of the article is that the Marine who allegedly killed a pregnant Marine may have fled to Mexico after the crime and now prosecutors may have to agree not to kill him in exchange for having him returned to the US. I’m sorry. But this doesn’t seem to me to be unfair. Not in the slightest.
What would be unfair is allowing this alleged killer, or for that matter anyone else, to be executed.
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Is the subtext of the AP article the 1840’s controversy that led up to the awful, inhuman Dred Scott decision, that fugitive slaves had to be returned to their “owners,” even if it meant their death? How, one asked then, could New York thwart slaveholders from doing whatever they wished with their “property?”
Disgusting.
non-extradition is ‘quaint’
(there’s some that think interference in the judicial system in Maricopa County is justice)
not strictly parallel, but Status of Forces Agreements allow for an interesting comparison…you know the one where U.S. personnel get whisked out of countries where they may have done bad things….
http://www.globalsecurity.org/…
In fact this civility is guaranteed by the Mexican Constitution, which also leaves much more to be desired of our US constitution (e.g. right of labor to organize, ownership of land by the people, etc.). An earlier 1857 Mexican Constitution was written directly in response to US slavery, offering slaves their freedom if they could but make it over the border. I have heard some say that particular Constitution was the best ever written in the world.
People tout US as “number one” without, I suppose, any knowledge of what other legal systems/constitutions are out there. In the case of outlawing debt servitude in particular, we may see yet more people fleeing across the border for a higher sense of human rights.