That's the title of an article in today's Denver Post. LINK
When a Houston jury recently refused to sentence a Mexican citizen to death for gunning down a Houston police officer, it sparked an uproar in Texas, where in recent years convicted killers have been executed about every other week.
The uproar was partly fueled by the fact that the government of Mexico had paid to protect defendant Juan Quintero's life by hiring several prominent American death-penalty lawyers, including noted Denver civil-rights attorney David Lane.
The case brought the first widespread publicity to a campaign Mexico is waging to protect the lives of its citizens. The Mexican government doesn't recognize the death penalty or even a life sentence without parole.
"The Mexican government has an obligation to defend its citizens abroad," said Mexican embassy spokesman Ricardo Alday in Washington, who couldn't put a cost on the program.
Quintero was deported to Mexico in 1999 after his conviction for molesting a 12-year-old. Then he snuck back into the U.S. and, in September 2006, shot Houston police officer Rodney Johnson seven times after a traffic stop.
Lane, who spent some of March, April and May in Houston working on Quintero's case, said Mexico's program gave Quintero what may have been his best chance at avoiding death. Quintero's lawyers argued that he was insane and had a brain abnormality.
"I truly take my hat off to Mexico for funding this program," Lane said. "Defending a death-penalty case can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million. None of these defendants has any money, and the cases fall to public defenders, at the taxpayers' expense."
Lane is one of 21 U.S. lawyers hired by Mexico to represent 51 Mexican citizens in the United States currently on death row and another 200 facing death-penalty trials. Since 2000, U.S. lawyers hired by Mexico have represented some 450 defendants.
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