Just an additional musing (and I’m not yet sure what to make of it, myself): our patchwork quilt of laws in the U.S. probably complicates things. Had Laurean committed his crime in Minnesota instead of North Carolina, extradition wouldn’t be an issue. Mexico would hand him over without qualms.

PS I have been to Predator games rooting for my Ducks and it’s brutal there too.

Obviously you’ve never been to a hockey game between a Canadian team and a US team. :p

I’ll also state, for the sake of transparency, that I’m against the death penalty–though I don’t think that impacts my view on the extradition question.

On that question, I have a few thoughts:

(1) The Mexican government, like any government, has an obligation to protect the rights of its citizens, even when–perhaps *especially* when–those citizens are accused of committing a crime in another country. The U.S. also seeks to protect the rights of its citizens in other countries; the first thing a U.S. citizen arrested in another country should do is contact the embassy or consulate. The wrinkle in this case is that the accused is apparently in his own country, rather than in the country where he’s accused of committing the crime. Still, it isn’t self-evident to me that any country should extradite one of its citizens to face trial elsewhere unless it first ensures that said citizens rights will be protected. I doubt the U.S. would extradite one of our citizens to face trial on a murder charge in Saudi Arabia unless we were first assured that public beheading was off the table. (I use this example only for illustration; I’m not sure whether we even *have* an extradition agreement with Saudi Arabia.) We think public beheading violates a person’s rights; the Mexican government thinks the death penalty does. I don’t see a difference here. (Especially given that Mexico has no objections to locking the fellow up and throwing away the key, if he’s convicted.)

(2) As Marc pointed out, Canada does precisely the same thing. It’s simply part of how governments behave when the welfare of their citizens is concerned.

(3) The fact that something happens in one country’s jurisdiction doesn’t necessarily mean it’s nobody else’s business, even if it’s an internal affair. Two years ago, Hamas won democratic elections in the Palestinian territories. Even though that’s arguably a political matter internal to the territories, and even though it was a democratic election, the U.S. reacted negatively and tried to influence how the aftermath would play out. I don’t see any particular issue with that, in principle. The U.S. simply took what reasonable steps it could to influence Palestinian politics in a way that might be a little more favorable to it. I’m not sure how making an extradition contingent on taking the death penalty off the table, when the extraditing government is strongly opposed to such a penalty and does not impose it itself, is fundamentally different.