Posted on 09/12/2008 6:00:19 AM PDT by kellynla
EL PASO, Texas — Two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a drug smuggler and trying to cover it up have been denied a request for a new hearing.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans denied the request by Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean on Wednesday. The same court upheld the men's convictions in July.
No reason was given for the Wednesday's denial.
Ramos and Compean are each serving sentences of more than 10 years for shooting Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the buttocks while he was fleeing from an abandoned marijuana load in 2005.
Aldrete was sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison for his role in two seperate smuggling efforts later that same year.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
This is so disgusting.
This really pi**es me off. It is the main reason that I have lost all respect for Bush. Heck, if McCain had not picked Palin (finally, someone with balls), I’d have sat out this election. Should McCain get elected, I expect him to free these agents asap. If McCain even thinks about amnesty, it’s just about time for a revolt.
Why not? Black robes are beginning to look a lot like white sheets.
Petition at grassfire.org
Also, freep President Bush
comments@whitehouse.gov
202-456-1111
These guys deserve full pardon
This is a travesty of justice.
What can we do? Call Trancedo? This is an atrocity... we are going go hang ourselves. I don’t know what has happened to this world.
Sounds like these judges are on the Mexican Drug Cartel payroll...
Doubt McCain will pardon the BP agents...he is as pro-illegal as Bush...
Only Chuck Baldwin has publicly stated that he will pardon Ignacio and Ramos
Oh, please.
Appeals courts rarely give reasons for why they will not review cases. That's not normal practice.
They almost never give reasons when its as econd appeal after the first appeal was rejected.
These two are guilty, period.
The more immigration reform advocates cling to these two losers, the more unhinged and less focused they become.
Once Senor McCain gets elected, you might as well throw away any chances of those 2 getting out.
Hopefully Bush will pardon Ramos & Compean just before he leaves office.
finally, someone with common sense on one of these threads....those two belong in jail
Unacceptable doesn't even begin to cover this situation.
Nifong has been removed from office. Same needs to be done to Sutton. IMHO, Sutton has many skeletons in his closet in addition to they horrific way he handled this case. For example for one professional directory, he refused to answer the question about his marital status. Made me wonder if his wife - if he has one - is involved in something controversial.
Guilty of what? Trying to guard the border? Trusting their supervisor to file the correct report? Of not letting an international felon escape?
Which side are you on here? You haven't turned ACLU/La Raza moonbat on us have you?
Oh wow, I'm gonna vote for Chuck Baldwin now.
What is he running for?
It does appear as if the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals has been infiltrated. This is such a travesty. And so few care. They are more concerned with flip comments made by politicians and pundits than they are with this horrific miscarriage of justice.
Darn those overzealous prosecutors when the law is on their side!
The more immigration reform advocates cling to these two losers, the more unhinged and less focused they become. “
Do you have no sympathy for them? I actually agree that they screwed up. I think it is really unfortunate that they got charged under that stupid firearms statue with the ten year mandatory minimum though. I do not think this is the type of conduct Congress intended to punish when they wrote that vague statute, and I think the prosecutors were jerks for even filing under it. This is all typical though. Prosecutors heap on the charges, stretch the laws as far as possible to add more charges, and then punish people who do not shut up and plead. I bet these two could have pled out on misdemeanor charges.
It was meant to convey the idea that judges have become tyrannical and despotic.
Maybe I should have said: "Black robes are beginning to look like brown shirts."
Perhaps the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals should look into the issue.
Do we know the WHOLE story?
I am sure many of us want to read the trial transcript(s) and see for ourselves if the “guilty verdict is appropriate!
Yep, guilty of protecting you. (if you are an American)
The more immigration reform advocates cling to these two losers, the more unhinged and less focused they become.
You've got it completely backwards as usual. We don't advocate reform. We advocate enforcing the law vis-a-vis immigration.
But because these particular incompetent and criminal officers worked for the border patrol instead of the Shelbyville Township PD and because the drugrunner they tried to execute was an illegal, they are heroes to some.
How does it smell way up there where you have your head?
Common sense? You two half-wits obviously have sub-standard components.
All the other people who think as nobly and rationally as you do are busy trying to find dirt on Sarah Palin.
If you haven't already, you're a little late to this game.
care; not car.
appeals are normally over a flaw in the trial process and not a retrial
i’m afraid the best bet for these guys is a pardon or commutation
Thanks for the really intelligent, well-thought out post.
With individuals like yourself on their side, I'm sure these two crooks will be out of prison in no time.
You can't really enforce some laws and not others though. A jury of their peers found them guilty. I can accept that. What bothers me about this case is the stupid firearms law. The reason they got ten years is because they were convicted under a firearms statute for using a firearm in the commission of a crime. Obviously this was not the sort of conduct Congress intended to punish with this law, and ten years? They got more time then the drug smuggler who got caught twice. The only reason for this is because of that darned firearm statute with the ten year mandatory minimum. The jury found them guilty on the much lesser crime, and therefore they were found guilty of using a firearm in the commission of a crime. One thing we should take from this is that we need to really rethink long mandatory minimums because often they result in unintended and tragic consequences like we saw in this case. If not for the mandatory minimum the judge never would have given these guys anywhere close to ten years.
Because of their incompetence, an illegal drugrunning criminal escaped prosecution.
They endangered me - the only people their actions were designed to protect were themselves. But that also backfired due to their incompetence.
You've got it completely backwards as usual. We don't advocate reform. We advocate enforcing the law vis-a-vis immigration.
The existing Democrat-crafted immigration laws are stupid and counterproductive. They reward sloth and punish industry, and they prioritize blood instead patriotism.
Those laws need to change.
If you advocate nothing more than enforcing the existing broken laws, you're not much help.
Might try to talk my neighbor out of joining the border patrol because out of all of the places where you need “we've got your back” that isn't one of them.
You may very well be right. If we had have sat on that jury we may very well have convicted too. To me the travesty was the sentence. They got hammered with a ten year mandatory sentence for using a firearm in the commission of a crime. The judge had no choice but to give them this sentence because there was a mandatory minimum sentence, and of course the drug smuggler caught twice got less time because that's what the sentencing guidelines called for. If people learn anything from this I'd like to see them learn that long mandatory minimum sentences aren't always such a good thing, that we should have very few of these in our criminal statutes because so often we have cases where the mandatory minimum sentence is way too much when you look at the actual underlying conduct in a particular case.
Attempted murder.
Trying to guard the border?
Is taht what they were trying to do? Given their clowning it's kind of hard to tell.
Trusting their supervisor to file the correct report?
Heh heh.
First, both of them knew that it was their responsibility to file an incident report and furnish their supervisor with it. Not the other way around.
Second, tampering with evidence is even worse than not filing a report.
Aldrete-Davila didn't escape? He didn't get away? Ramos and Compean took him into custody?
Everyone with any familiarity with the case knows that Aldrete-Davila got away.
Which side are you on here?
I am on the side of having border enforcement personnel who do their jobs properly. Who don't let individuals like Aldrete-Davila escape and who do not obviously violate the Fourth Amendment, ensuring that a judge will let the criminal escape.
You haven't turned ACLU/La Raza moonbat on us have you?
Not at all. Championing Ramos and Compean is to champion the wrong way of doing things and to celebrate incompetence.
When you read the trial transcripts you have to wince at what a bad job Compean admits to doing.
McCain should state that his very first act as President will be to issue a full pardon for these two men.
These men never should have been prosecuted.
At times the Bush Justice Department seems to function as a fully owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party.
I have absolutely zero sympathy for Compean. He is a contemptible toad.
I believe that Ramos actually thought he was defending a fellow officer - but instead of doing the right thing after he realized this was not the case, he stuck by Compean's lies rather than honor his oblighation to the public trust.
In my personal opinion, Ramos' sentence was too harsh and Compean's sentence was far too light.
I usually ignore these posters whose purpose appears to be to disrupt, distort, and trash conservatives on FR.
BTW, I expect Palin would pardon Ramos and Compean if she had the power - which she will not have as VP.
How interesting. How do you reconcile your comment above with your comment #26? ROTFLMAO
Meanwhile swat teams can break into the wrong house, shoot innocent people, and not only do they not go to jail or lose their jobs, they don't even have to apologize to the victims family. I guess Mexican drug smugglers are more important than innocent Americans, at least to the Bush administration.
That’s not a very good analogy, unless you wish to argue that Ramos and Compean were shooting at the wrong guy.
IMHO the correct procedure:
—Pardon.
—Reinstate with back pay. Relieve their former “superiors”.
—Promote ahead of peers. Consider them first when finding replacements for their former “superiors”.
—Make the actions for which they were charged Official Policy. I mean, shooting invaders on sight and giving plausible deniability ought to be POLICY.
—Oh yes...marksmanship training so the invaders don’t survive/escape.
How about the smuggler? Was his sentence too harsh or too light? I just don't agree with you about Compean. These guys were on the job. They were in a risky business where things can get really dangerous, where people carry guns and people do get shot and killed. He got excited and started popping off rounds and then he tried to hide his screw up. Yes, he should lose his job, maybe even get some time, but ten years with no parole? No way. People get a lot less for far worse conduct. It was too much time for both of these guys.
It is rare that law enforcement get charged for their screw ups. When it happens they usually don't get hammered this hard. The problem was the firearms statute with the ten year mandatory minimum sentence. That's why these two got so much time. If not for the mandatory minimum sentence they'd probably be home today.
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