Posted on 11/15/2007 6:16:46 PM PST by Perchant
Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, the drug smuggler who testified for the prosecution during the trials for Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, has been arrested on charges of bringing more than 750 pounds of marijuana into the United States.
Aldrete-Davila was arrested today at the El Paso border crossing on charges involving what has become know as the "second load," in which he smuggled a second 750-pound load of marijuana into the U.S. after he was given immunity by the prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, for the first load.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Character goes to impeachment. Really. Crimes of moral turpitude can be adduced even if they have no relevance to the actual case in hand or to explicit evidence given by the witness.
I’m not sure drug running is a crime of moral turpitiude. But I AM sure that, in Virginia, at least, what I say is true because whenever somebody cops to such a crime, the judges with whom I was most familiar always made sure they knew that from then on moral turpitude could be adduced against any evidence they gave in court.
In general, to impeach a witness you don’t have to show that he’s lying about a particular chunk of evidence. Within some limits, you can show that he’s a liar.
But we also have information that the judge called the families of Ramos and Compean before him and told them he didn’t want them talking about the wnd incident of drug running. Was he afraid they’d taint the jury pool or what?
I think this case is FULL of reasonable doubt and that the judge excluded relevant evidence to the character of a main witness for the prosecution.
It stinks.
Actually, a not guilty verdict does NOT show the prosecution was unreasonable. Valid prosecutions can end up with not-guilty verdicts, because our system is biased toward letting the guilty free over convicting the innocent. SO if you convince 11 jurors, but one is not, you can’t convict.
There are many people who actually believe OJ was not guilty. There would be many fewer if he had been found guilty.
But a guilty verdict certainly suggests there was enough evidence to justify a prosecution, since the level of evidence needed to find someone guilty is much higher than the evidence to justify prosecution.
If a 20-foot-draft boat makes it through a channel, it’s reasonable to expect a 7-foot boat could. If the 20-foot-boat doesn’t, it doesn’t mean the 7-footer would have trouble.
The guilty verdict doesn’t prove that the person was guilty, or that the prosecution was valid. It merely provides more evidence which must be countered to argue otherwise.
The circle of people who must be attacked in order to argue for the innocence of C and R is quite large, and includes people for who the ONLY evidence against them is that they must be wrong for C/R to be set free.
I will note that in the most egregious case of prosecutorial misconduct we know about, Nifong, we both KNEW something was up early, and the truth came out before the case went to trial, and in fact the truth somewhat became obvious as it became clear the trial would never find guilt.
Since your response cannot be logically debated, I will leave it there. I refuse to ignore rationality.
The flaw in your argument is that his guilt in the 2nd smuggling case had no bearing on his honesty in the first case, happening after the first and not contradicting his claim to have not run drugs before the 1st case.
Being a drug smuggler was already in evidence. He had to admit to running the drugs.
If Nifong had been able to bring those kids to trial and was able to conceal evidence the way Sutton was able to conceal evidence, those kids would have been found guilty and they would be rotting in jail. That wouldn't be evidence that they were actually guilty or that the trial should have even happened. We caught it beforehand because the prosecutors misconduct became apparent before a trial could be held. Sutton's misconduct didn't become apparent until after the trial.
It wasn’t his problem concealing evidence, it was that he had no evidence to show their guilt. I guess you could call hiding that he had no evidence concealing, but how would you conceal your lack of evidence in an actual trial?
If Nifong had been able to do what you say, it would probably have meant he wasn’t corrupt. As it was, he couldn’t do either.
>>On the other hand, without that card we may never have gotten a chance to bust him.<<
That’s what I was thinking. OTOH if Sutton had not made him famous we would not be paying much attention even if he did get busted again.
You have been reduced to illogical babbling. Stop digging.
I disagree (Hey! What a surprise, huh?)
The weight of involvement, even suspicion, in the second case is against CHARACTER, rather than the truth of this or that individual chunk o’ evidence or testimony.
We have contradictory accounts of an event. In the trial of fact, the jury has to assess the reliability of this oor that witness. Whom will they believe when they can’t believe both, and why this one rather than that one?
If the defense is allowed to say, “Even the government has evidence that this witness is or is rapidly becoming a habitual criminal, and to show some of the evidence, it goes to character which goes to credibility.
So I think it does have bearing. It’s not dispositive all by itself, I guess, but if it comes down to this one says v. that one says, the fact that that one seems to have contempt for the law would seem to be relevant.
A friend was tried for sexual battery. (I tried to get a sexual battery, but it turns out vibrators run on regular batteries - joke) The testimony of his landlord that he paid his rent on time, took good care of the house, was friendly, and pious was admissible, even though plenty of people who commit sexual assault of one kind or another have nice lawns and credit ratings.
I don’t know federal rules of evidence, I scarcely know Virginia rules of evidence, but I’ve been at enough trials to know character testimony, pro or con, is admissible, even if the testimony does not relate in detail to the evidence given by the person whose character is under discussion.
And besides, whether is legally justified or not, a lot of trials are adjuciated on the basis of whether or not the alleged “victim” “needed shooting”. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not, but it’s a real thing.
I’m not a lawyer, so this should be taken with that in mind. Character testimony applies more to whether someone would have committed a crime they are charged with, not with whether the person would lie under oath.
Generally you must show like-kind evidence, so to introduce otherwise irrelevant information to impeach, that impeachment should be of the same type. If you want to show a person would lie, you introduce evidence they lied. If you want to show a person would commit a rape, you introduce evidence of a prior rape.
Past criminal convictions are generally relevant against a defendant.
But non-like-kind nefarious conduct isn’t. And the rules for impeaching witnesses are different and generally more strict, as we want to limit the ability to put witnesses on trial (and thus discouraging people from testifying).
Thus when the defence in this case tried to introduce the allegation of a 2nd drug bust, the first thing the judge had to do was determine if the information was of like kind. To do so, the judge assumes the allegation is correct, and rules on whether if true it is germane. The judge in this case decided that even if it was proven he had a 2nd drug bust, it would not appropriately impugn his testimony (because it would have no bearing on his truthfulness).
I don’t know if that ruling was correct, I can only say that I understand it and it appears rational.
Fortunately, as I have argued to others on the nifong matter, we don’t let one person be a judge, jury, and executioner. We have an entire system built to prevent innocent people from being declared guilty. Part of that is an appeals process which is going now. If the evidence of C/R’s innocence, and Suttons corruption, is so overwhelmingly obvious, the intelligent, experienced, and well-trained judges of the appeals court will certainly be able to see that and rule accordingly.
If they throw out the conviction, I will be fine with that. If they don’t, it will indicate once again that my position is not absurd as many here suggest (but I imagine the response will be to accuse the judges of the appeals court of SOMETHING untoward).
So far, the list of people who are part of the evil is already quite large. Sutton, the female prosecuter, the judge in the case, every juror who didn’t recant afterwords. The BP agent who investigated the case. The BP agents who work with C/R, along with their supervisors and the head of the BP. The crime lab. Pretty much the entire DHS. Gonzales and his drug-dealing family. George Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney.
So it’s no big deal adding a few more judges to the list.
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