Mexican Citizen Is Executed as Justices Refuse to Step In

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/us/08execute.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Mexican%20Citizen%20is%20executed%20as%20Justices&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 10:39 AM
Subject: re: Mexican Citizen Is Executed as Justices Refuse to Step In
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  In his dissent, justice Breyer enumerates three counts on which a majority of our Supreme Court erred in the matter of Humberto Leal Garcia Jr. In each case he is right, but he is too diplomatic to add a fourth; the Court's action violates the plain meaning of our Constitution.  Our constitution provides that a foreign treaty duly ratified by our Senate is Federal Law. As such, when there is a conflict between State law and such a treaty, it is the treaty that is binding. Our supreme court got this wrong in re Medellin and it will continue to get this wrong until it overthrows that mistake.

Barry Haskell Levine