On Tuesday, the Supreme court ruled that Mexican parents can’t sue the border patrol agent who killed their son.
This ruling was a defeat for Jesus Hernandez and Maria Guadalupe Gierek, the parents of 15-year-old Sergio Hernandez Gierek. The boy was on the side of Mexico on the border near El Paso, Texas and Ciudad juárez, when he was shot in 2010, the us border guard, the gunman from the United States.
According to NBC, this case has caused tension in the issue of security of border areas.
The teenager, a Mexican national, was playing with three friends in a concrete pipe that separates the two cities. They dared to cross the border, unmarked, ran over and touched the fence on the US side, and then ran back to the Mexican side.
Agent U.S. border patrol Jesus Mesa, Jr. arrested one of the boys for illegally crossing the border, but Sergio Hernandez escaped and returned to the Mexican side. Agent Mesa grabbed my gun and fired from a distance of about 60 feet, killing 15-year-old boy shot in the head.
An investigation by the U.S. authorities came to the conclusion that Mesa was shot in self-defense in response to the fact that the smugglers threw stones at him, although his defence did not adduce any evidence that Sergio Hernandez threw something in the agent.
Mexican prosecutors accused Mesa of murder. When the United States refused to grant Jesus Mesa, the parents of a teenager shot sued. American courts rejected their case, however, concluding that the protection of the Constitution from excessive force does not apply to anyone outside the United States.
Judge Samuel Alito, speaking on behalf of the conservative majority in the Supreme court of five, said that the court will not extend Federal law to claims against the actions of law enforcement bodies of the USA which have consequences in other countries.
«Cross-border firing by definition is an international incident» — said Alito, calling for diplomatic rather than legal solution.
