Ah, for the good old days when the condemned man was strapped into Old Sparky and danced the Electric Slide long before it became a popular number at tacky suburban wedding receptions. There was something about the hum of the current and the crackle of several thousand volts coursing through the body of a murderer or a rapist that appealed to our most visceral and atavistic sense of just retribution. Alas, the good old days are now the awful contemporary days where “sensitivity to the feelings of others and society” is the rule and societal mutants are lulled to sleep by a lethal injection.
Thus was Humberto Leal ushered from this life to the next last night – but not before shouting “Viva Mexico” in his last moments of consciousness. In 1994, 21 year-old Leal brutally raped and murdered 16 year-old Adria Sauceda, was found guilty of the crime and sentenced to death. In an ideal world, he would have been dispatched after expedited appeals were denied all the way to SCOTUS over a period not exceeding two years.
But this is not an ideal world, and the appeals process dragged out over the course of seventeen years – complicated by the fact that Leal was technically not a U.S. citizen, despite the fact that he had lived in our country since he was two years old.
Leal was just a toddler when he and his family moved to the U.S. from Monterrey, Mexico, but his citizenship became a key element of his attorneys’ appeals. They said police never told him following his arrest that he could seek legal assistance from the Mexican government under an international treaty.
Mexico’s government, President Barack Obama’s administration and others wanted the Supreme Court to stay the execution to allow Congress time to consider legislation that would require court reviews for condemned foreign nationals who aren’t offered the help of their consulates. The high court rejected the request 5-4.
But questions remain over how Leal’s execution may affect relations between Mexico and the U.S. – and Texas, the country’s busiest death penalty state that shares a roughly 1,250-mile border with Mexico.
Leal’s relatives who gathered in Guadalupe, Mexico, burned a T-shirt with an image of the American flag as a sign of protest. Leal’s uncle, Alberto Rodriguez, criticized the U.S. justice system and the Mexican government, saying “there is a God who makes us all pay.”
It’s worth noting that former president George W. Bush joined the chorus of protest, further cementing his much-deserved niche in the Hall of Bad Presidents. Back in 2005 then-President Bush tried to force the U.S. to comport itself with an International Court of Justice ruling that Leal and 50 other Mexican-born inmates nationwide should be entitled to new hearings to determine if their consular rights were violated. Thankfully, SCOTUS later overruled him.
In this case, SCOTUS majority expressed doubt that their decision would have “grave international consequences” and I’m inclined to agree. It’s not as if Mexico will suddenly downshift its long established policy featuring myriad procedural safeguards for accused foreign nationals and countless opportunities to appeal the conviction to the nation’s highest court – because those safeguards and opportunities simply don’t exist there, despite the fact that the death penalty was abolished in 2005.
What I find most disturbing about this whole sorry episode is not so much Leal’s execution (I’m ambivalent about the death penalty and would have no problem abolishing it in favor of a gulag-type prison system located in the Aleutian Islands) but rather his final words, together with the reaction of his family in Mexico who burned an image of the American flag.
Back in the days when Old Sparky was in his glory, so were immigrants to the United States, who turned their backs on their homelands and came here to become Americans – with no intention of ever leaving. They adopted our language, our culture, and our patriotism. They also adopted the Founding Fathers – most of whom were of Anglo-Saxon ancestry – as their forefathers and inculcated in their children a deep respect for the Constitution and the rule of law. In time their descendants married the progeny of other immigrants, literally creating a new ethnicity: Americans.
Not so today with regard to Mexico which, for all practical and historical purposes, is a failed nation-state and a culture in precipitous decline. The rise of radical reconquista organizations such as La Raza give ample evidence of a disturbing trend that, for the past two decades, has witnessed hordes of Mexican nationals invading our country for the sole purpose of recolonizing it in the name of a greater and more glorious Mexico – whose glory days ended with their defeat in the Mexican-American War of 1846.
While there is still time remaining, it is imperative that the federal government close down the border with Mexico, strictly enforce all existing immigration laws, end all federal welfare assistance to illegal aliens and pass legislation mandating that – with carefully delineated exceptions – only the English language be used in all federal documents and communications.
You would be amazed to see how quickly the illegal immigration problem fades away once the Border Patrol is authorized to shoot armed Mexican invaders on sight, the ICE agency is authorized to deport any and all illegals it encounters and sanctuary cities are forbidden by federal law. There will be no need to deport all 15 million illegals: once these measures are put into effect, they will by and large deport themselves.
