Texas Shouldn’t - but JUST DID - Execute a Mexican National
let’s face it, border state have an extra responsibility to work closely with DC, State Dept., and the neighbor at hand. For Texas of course thats Mexico, and Texas just really complicated efforts to get Mexico to extradite criminals to here.
Yesterday, at 9:32 p.m., the state of Texas executed Edgar Arias Tamayo, a 46-year-old Mexican national. Injecting lethal drugs into Mr. Tamayo’s bloodstream was a clear violation of the United States’ international obligations, and yet the state of Texas wasn’t deterred.
What’s going on here? The short answer: a deadly combination of a blood-thirsty state and a stalled Congress.
Let’s start with the state. Texas’ death penalty system is notorious. Despite well-founded concerns about innocent people ending up on death row, racial bias, inadequate assistance of counsel, and a whole host of other problems, Texas has put 509 people to death in the last three decades. These executions continue despite the fact that six other states have repealed the death penalty in the last six years (and three other states - Delaware, Nebraska, and Colorado - have come close). Texas remains one of the reasons that the U.S. is an outlier among democratic nations, ranking 5th in the world in the number of executions, after China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
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