Posted on 06/16/2004 12:54:39 PM PDT by ambrose
Posted on Wed, Jun. 16, 2004
Immigrant says he was beaten, threatened with dog
By Karen Brooks
Star-Telegram Border Bureau
HEBBRONVILLE - A Salvadoran immigrant told a jury Tuesday that he feared for his life after members of an armed citizen-patrol group caught him sneaking across a local ranch.
Edwin Mancia, 26, testified in Spanish that he was beaten on the head with a pistol and threatened with a Rottweiler dog.
"They told us we were going to go to the gate to wait for a man," Mancia testified through an interpreter. "I thought they were going to kill us there."
The man they were awaiting was ranch owner Joe Sutton, who turned Mancia and his girlfriend loose after questioning them about whether they were trafficking drugs, officials say.
Sutton had called Arizona-based Ranch Rescue, a volunteer group formed to help border ranchers guard against undocumented immigrants crossing their property.
Sutton's ranch is about 60 miles north of the Mexican border.
Mancia is the prosecution's key witness in the trial of Casey Nethercott, a Ranch Rescue volunteer charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm in the March 2003 incident.
Mancia's two-hour testimony capped a week of the prosecution's case in the 229th district court. Nethercott, who denies the allegations, is expected to start his defense today.
Jurors got their first, and perhaps last, glimpse of Nethercott speaking in his own defense when prosecutors played a tape of the Fox news magazine show The O'Reilly Factor.
In the televised interview, Nethercott said the charges were "lies made up by the police department" who had "provoked" the immigrants into filing the charges.
There's no love lost between groups like Ranch Rescue and law-enforcement officers, who have called their group's activities dangerous.
"My personal opinion about Ranch Rescue? I don't know if you want to hear it," testified Doyle Holdridge, a Texas Ranger in South Texas for more than 20 years. "I think they're a bunch of people wanting to play police that are going to end up getting hurt themselves, or getting a law officer killed."
Holdridge and a U.S. Border Patrol agent testified that they saw a bump or a knot on Mancia's head but couldn't say when it had happened or how.
Nethercott's attorney, Joseph L. Jacobson of Austin, attempted to discredit Mancia on Tuesday and suggested that Mancia may be looking for money or the chance to stay legally in the United States during the trial.
Mancia and his girlfriend, fellow Salvadoran Fatima Leiva Medina, have filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Sutton, Nethercott and other members of Ranch Rescue.
Leiva, who was traveling with Mancia, is the case's only eyewitness, but she and Mancia differ in their accounts of the events. Last week, Leiva testified that Nethercott's Rottweiler climbed on top of Mancia while he was lying face down on the ground and that Nethercott struck Mancia with the gun after he pulled the dog off him.
Mancia testified Tuesday that the dog jumped at him from the front after he was hit with the gun.
TFB
And law enforcement is nowhere to be seen when people enter the country illegally.
If they refuse to enforce border laws and regs, then what point is there in prosecuting the ranch owner?
If entering this country illegally isn't prosecutable, then there are no laws.
Because 'illegal' doesn't mean 'illegal' anymore.
Well if our govt were doing its job.......
Well, thank God those brutes didn't put a pair of panties on his head.
Better than naked twister in Iraq..
Put a bag on his head.......
This just in: Ted Kennedy has a private collection of photos of the incident.
WTF, over? Why don't they just ship this guy and his girlfriend back over the border? How can anyone seriously contemplate awarding a verdict for the illegal alien plaintiff?
They shouldn't have a right to bring any suit in this country. We all know they shouldn't have been here in the first place. I swear I'm going to explode.
He should thank them for letting him live to tell the tale.
I wonder when Joey "I lie on my own son" Biden is going to stay that this goes "all the way to the top" too?
Still, what I want to know is why the dog didn't just eat this guy.
I wonder what the jury looks like?
Well, we do know that humiliating a Muslin is worse than beheading or otherwise killing an American. Don't know about how respectful we must be to Salvadorans.
"Still, what I want to know is why the dog didn't just eat this guy."
The dog doesn't like Mexican
Tell him we're sorry, then deport his butt ALL the way home.
"My personal opinion about Ranch Rescue? I don't know if you want to hear it," testified Doyle Holdridge, a Texas Ranger in South Texas for more than 20 years. "I think they're a bunch of people wanting to play police that are going to end up getting hurt themselves, or getting a law officer killed."Amen.
Instead of lobbying their Congressmen and persuading their fellow citizens to put pressure on the federal executive branch, they try to take the law in their own hands.
The executive branch is supposed to enforce our laws, including our border laws. If the Bush administration is not doing its job, then it's time to put pressure on it.
I sympathize with the ranchers, but I know that there is a better way than vigilante justice.
This is true.
But when law enforcement yawns at enforcing laws and refuses to do anything about rapes and murders commited by illegals, the only option left is to do it yourself.
Suddenly, law enforcement wants to do something after that.
Does not give a good name to the police there.
How do you know they haven't been lobbying, writing, letters etc?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.