Back in 1993, Jose E. Medellin was part of a Houston, TX, gang that raped, tormented and killed two teenaged girls. He was arrested and, after being Mirandized, confessed. But Medellin is Mexican, and under the terms of the Vienna Convention he was entitled to contact Mexican diplomats as well. He wasn't informed of that right.

Medellin was sentenced to death.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice ("ICJ," also known as the "World Court") ruled that Medellin's rights were violated by Texas authorities -- and Bush ordered the state of Texas to reopen the case. That's right, he actually went along with a ICJ decision!

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has now ruled that Bush had no power

"To me belongeth vengeance and recompense," it says in Deuteronomy 32:35 (KJV). In Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 12, verse 19, he wrote, "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

Ronell Wilson was sentenced to death earlier this week for killing two undercover police detectives in a weapons sting gone bad. Prior to Mr. Wilson's case, nobody has been sentenced to death in a federal court in New York in almost 50 years - and for a very good reason.

There are two, and only two, reasons given for executing convicted criminals. One is to serve as a deterrent. The other is a claim that "justice has been done." But neither argument, held up to the light, has any real substance.

Every study ever done on the results of capital punishment - state-sponsored murder - on a society shows that there is absolutely no deterrent. At best, the person who is executed won't commit any more crimes, but the same result can be achieved through imprisonment. Conversely, while the odds of those people ever doing anything to

New York State’s capital punishment law is in limbo, but the federal courts retain the power to put New Yorkers to death. And suddenly it’s looking like a trend. Just days after the sentencing of Ronell Wilson, a jury in Brooklyn's federal court convicted drug kingpin Kenneth McGriff of hiring hit men to murder his rivals. Prosecutors are expected to pursue the death penalty.

As the Albany Times-Union reports, Wilson's prosecutors may have been trying to make an end run around the New York Supreme Court's 2004 decision overturning the state's death penalty - "forum shopping," it's called. The United States of America will still strap a man down and put the needle in his arm, if New York won't. Of course, the Wilson jurors were New Yorkers, so let's not let ourselves too far off the hook here.