Texas is set to execute Mexican citizen Jose Medellin tomorrow “for the 1993 rape-strangulation of two teenage Houston girls, Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña”–in defiance of a recent “stay” of execution “ordered” by the U.N. International Court of Justice (I see my former professor, Rosalyn Higgins, now President of the Court, also voted for the stay).

Gotta like the comments of Randy Ertman, the father of one of the vitims:

“It’s just a last-ditch effort to keep the scumbag breathing,” Ertman said. “He never should have been breathing in the first place. I don’t care, I really don’t care what anyone thinks about this except Texas. I love Texas. Texas is in my blood.”

[Texas Governor] Perry has argued Texas isn’t bound by the decisions of international courts and that the state is determined to hold killers, regardless of their nationality, responsible for their crimes.

Texas has rebuffed not only the U.N. and Bush, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the judicial arm of the Organization of American States, which has demanded Medellin receive a new trial.

And some say federalism is pointless! Pshaw!Clarification: Some libertarians have accused me, based on this post, of favoring state executions, or, in the words of one, “murder.” I posted it because it’s interesting and an illustration of decentralism. I never implied I endorsed Texas’s actions here.

In fact, anyone familiar with my views knows I’m an anarchist and opposed to anything any state does, including execute murderers. I am opposed to state-conducted capital punishment. That said, it does not mean it’s “murder”–murder implies the subject is innocent. I oppose executions even if they aren’t murder, for a number of reasons — first, that it’s done by the state; second, although (private) capital punishment can be justified in principle, for a variety of reasons “restitution would probably become the predominant mode of justice in a free society.”

So, in this case: it’s not “murder” for Texas to execute Medellin; but I oppose it anyway, as a Texan and as a libertarian (that said, I’m not gonna lose sleep over this “scumbag,” as the victim’s father called him). In any event, this is an interesting illustration of decentralization–one state ignoring “orders” of outside states/agencies (the UN, US State Dept., OAS).