Mexico Addresses Euthanasia

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The Supreme Court has endorsed the right of Mexico City residents to use marijuana for medicinal purposes as established by the city’s constitution.

Eight of 11 judges ruled yesterday that the Constitutional Assembly of Mexico City, a body formed to create a new constitution for the capital, had not encroached on federal jurisdiction by including an article enshrining the right to use medicinal marijuana....

The Supreme Court also endorsed a range of other articles in the city’s constitution against which challenges had been filed, including the right to die with dignity, the right of access to water, the right to sexuality, the right for the local government to enter into agreements with international entities and the right for migrants not to be criminalized while in the capital regardless of their legal status.

With regard to the dignified death provision, the PGR argued that it effectively allowed for euthanasia and assisted suicide, which are prohibited under federal law and whose regulation is the exclusive domain of the federal government.

Las Vegas Man Sentenced After Assisted Suicide

http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_05c7fdd6-1fc4-11e2-9b32-001a4bcf6878.html

Posted: Friday, October 26, 2012 6:22 pm | Updated: 6:30 pm, Fri Oct 26, 2012.
Jared Taylor, Twitter: @jaredataylor The Monitor

McALLEN -  A federal judge sent to prison a Las Vegas man convicted of smuggling powerful animal tranquilizers from Mexico used in an assisted suicide in Nuevo Progreso.

Chief U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa sentenced Jeff George Ostfeld to six years in federal prison Wednesday, after he pleaded guilty to importation of a controlled substance.

But after the assisted suicide in Mexico, Hinojosa opted to follow sentencing guidelines for Ostfeld under a charge of voluntary manslaughter - not the drug charge.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Ostfeld in May 2009 as he attempted to smuggle animal tranquilizers across the Progreso International Bridge.

The arrest came moments after Mexican police discovered the body of 32-year-old Jennifer Malone at a Nuevo Progreso motel.

Ostfeld shot video of Malone as she died, investigators said. He retrieved some of her personal effects and abandoned her body in the motel room.

Mexican investigators found an empty bottle of Barbithal and a book about depression beside the body of Malone, of Roseburg, Ore.,  according to Monitor archives. The same drug was found by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers as Ostfeld tried to return to the United States.

Ostfeld told ICE agents he had flown from Las Vegas to McAllen to buy animal tranquilizers in Nuevo Progreso for resale in the United States. The drug can sell for as little as $20 per bottle in Mexico, but can net as much as $5,000 north of the Rio Grande.