Posted on 01/30/2007 5:17:32 AM PST by Ladycalif
New evidence suggests prosecuting U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of El Paso lied about how the government found the fleeing illegal alien Mexican drug smuggler, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, according to a Border Patrol advocate closely following the case of former agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.
Contrary to claims, no Mexican attorney was involved as an intermediary offering to reveal the identity of the drug smuggler and bring him back to the U.S. in exchange for given immunity to testify against Border Patrol, contended Andy Ramirez, chairman of Friends of the Border Patrol.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
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INVASION USA
Feds 'knew smuggler' in Border Patrol case
Critic charges prosecutor lied, made 'deal with the devil'
Posted: January 30, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.comNew evidence suggests prosecuting U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of El Paso lied about how the government found the fleeing illegal alien Mexican drug smuggler, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, according to a Border Patrol advocate closely following the case of former agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.
Contrary to claims, no Mexican attorney was involved as an intermediary offering to reveal the identity of the drug smuggler and bring him back to the U.S. in exchange for given immunity to testify against Border Patrol, contended Andy Ramirez, chairman of Friends of the Border Patrol.
"It's shocking how much lying Johnny Sutton has done about Aldrete-Davila," he told WND.
"The government made a deal with the devil to put Ramos and Compean behind bars," Ramirez said. "Sutton's story about the lawyer in Mexico is a total fabrication, completely and maliciously false. The government knew Aldrete-Davila's identity from Border Patrol and DHS sources almost immediately after the event."
Commenting to WND for this story, Sutton insisted there was insufficient evidence to charge the drug smuggler, who was in a foreign country, which would have made it difficult to extradite him.
Ramirez told WND the information came from Rene Sanchez, a Border Patrol agent who was stationed a sector away from El Paso, in Wilcox, Ariz., a small town some 80 miles east of Tucson on Interstate 10.
According to Ramirez, Sanchez and Aldrete-Davila grew up together in San Ysidro, Mexico, and they have remained life-long friends.
Sanchez's mother-in-law and Aldrete-Davila's mother also have remained good friends. Sanchez was notified by his mother-in-law that Aldrete-Davila had been shot. She reportedly heard about the incident from friends in Mexico, possibly even from Aldrete-Davila's mother.
Ramirez next reports Rene Sanchez, according to a Department of Homeland Security memorandum of activity document, began querying the Border Patrol Tracking System and found that the Fabens Border Patrol Station seized a load of marijuana Feb. 17, 2005.
In sworn testimony Andy Ramirez gave on Aug.17, 2006, to the U.S. House Committee of Judiciary, Ramirez continues the narrative from there:
Rene Sanchez calls the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at DHS and speaks to a Special Agent Christopher Sanchez who was a four-month trainee in OIG. Previously Sanchez served as an ICE agent in Arizona before lateraling over to OIG. Chris Sanchez began investigating the case on March 4, 2005. This is when the agents learn that there was a claim that the smuggler was wounded two weeks before during the incident at Fabens.Eventually, Chris Sanchez goes to Mexico and brings Davila back to El Paso and the William Beaumont Army Medical Center and has a fragment of a bullet removed. The chain of evidence, including custody gets really murky at this point and the agents (Ramos and Compean) are arrested, charged, and arraigned within days.
Ramirez next testified to the House Judiciary Committee that agent Rene Sanchez's mother-in-law was also involved in driving Aldrete-Davila into El Paso for his hospital treatments at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center. These trips allegedly were coordinated through DHS Special Agent Christopher Sanchez, who quickly became the government's manager of Aldrete-Davila in the U.S.
According to Ramirez, agent Sanchez was the one who then assisted Aldrete-Davila in finding a U.S. attorney to sue Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean in a civil case charging the agents had violate his civil rights by discharging their weapons at him in a criminal fashion as he was running away to evade arrest. WND has been unable to find any Mexican attorney who represents Aldrete-Davila.
Ramirez believes understanding how Aldrete-Davila was found is a key piece to understanding the prosecution's prejudice against Ramos and Compean:
The government did have a choice to prosecute the drug dealer they had identified as the suspect, he insisted. Instead attorney Sutton and his office decided to give the likely drug smuggler immunity so he could testify against Ramos and Compean.
Ramirez was emphatic in his conclusion.
"If the truth about how the government got their hands on Aldrete-Davila had been told to the jury, there is no way the jury would have believed a word of his story that he was unarmed."
In the Jan. 19 WND interview with Sutton, a reference to Aldrete-Davila's family seemed at the time to contradict Sutton's claim that Aldrete-Davila came forth from a Mexican lawyer seeking immunity. In explaining why his office did not seek to prosecute Aldrete-Davila, Sutton commented in the interview that:
The agents put us in a situation where there was no way to prove in a court that Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila was connected to that load of marijuana. We would not even known about him had he not come and the investigators for Homeland Security been able to find him through his family.Now, in the context of the information provided by Andy Ramirez about the connection between agent Rene Sanchez and Aldrete-Davila's families in Mexico, Sutton's comment apparently corroborate Ramirez's account. The DHS agent Sutton to which Sutton referred could be Chris Sanchez, who was working with Aldrete-Davila's family in Mexico to bring the suspect back to the U.S.
From the beginning of the case, Sutton has claimed he could not prosecute the drug smuggler because the fleeing Mexican got away and left no fingerprints on his van at the scene Feb. 17, 2005. The van was found to contain 743 pounds of marijuana. Aldrete-Davila abandoned the vehicle to head for the Rio Grande on foot, determined to evade arrest from the Border Patrol in hot pursuit.
"Sutton's attempt to make his decision to prosecute Ramos and Compean look sympathetic falls apart once we realize the government had found the suspect, contrary to Sutton's claims that finding the suspect was impossible," Ramirez told WND. "Yet, apparently attempting to cover up the truth, Sutton has stuck to his story that Aldrete-Davila came forward through a Mexican lawyer who shielded the identity of his client until the government gave his client immunity."
Sutton has consistently claimed that without fingerprints, the prosecution had no alternative but to abandon the idea of prosecuting the perpetrator of the cross-border drug delivery.
Yet, somehow, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila showed up back in the U.S. as a guest of the government. Once Aldrete-Davila was back in the U.S., a U.S. Army doctor removed a bullet that entered his right groin after passing through the left side of his left buttocks. All this was engineered by Sutton's office, in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security, aimed toward obtaining from Aldrete-Davila ballistics evidence that would prove Ramos and Compean had fired and hit Aldrete-Davila as he fled.
WND separately has reported the ballistics evidence failed to tie the weapon fired by agent Ramos with the bullet removed from Aldrete-Davila by the U.S. Army doctor.
Since Aldrete-Davila escaped the scene without being apprehended, Sutton had no way to prove definitively the drug smuggler had been unarmed, unless he could give Aldrete-Davila immunity and obtain his testimony on the stand.
Proving that Aldrete-Davila was unarmed was a central part of Sutton's case arguing Ramos and Compean had committed assault with the intent to kill under 18 U.S.C., Section 113(a)(c) and seeking to add 10-year mandatory sentences for having committed this assault with their weapons, in violation of 18 U.S. Section 924(c). If Aldrete-Davila was a fleeing, armed drug smuggling suspect, then Sutton simply had no case against Ramos and Compean.
WND previously has reported on a letter Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Oct. 11, 2006, arguing 18 U.S.C. Section 924(c) was the wrong statute under which to prosecute Ramos and Compean.
Ramirez told WND that charging Ramos and Compean with 18 U.S.C. Section 924(c) showed the determination of the prosecutors to pile on as much prison time as possible on the two agents. The statute carries a mandatory 10-year sentence as additional punishment for carrying or using a weapon in a violent crime, such as rape or drug smuggling.
In his interview with WND, Ramirez charged the government found Aldrete-Davila in an independent investigative manner that would have permitted Sutton to have prosecuted the drug dealer. Instead, Sutton decided to offer Aldrete-Davila immunity and free government-paid medical care, provided he would return to the U.S. and testify against the Border Patrol agents.
In the Jan. 19 interview, WND questioned Sutton about how Aldrete-Davila had been found.
The following exchange contains Sutton's answer:
WND: So, Aldrete-Davila ran away, and as you say, at the time you didn't have any basis to know who he was and there were no fingerprints. But yet, you found the guy. If you found the guy to give him immunity, why couldn't you have found the guy to punish him?SUTTON: The way we found him is that he came forward and was in Mexico with a lawyer. So, the only way to get him to testify was to give him immunity from being prosecuted. He wasn't going to agree to come to the United States, he wasn't going to agree to talk, unless he had some kind of immunity from being prosecuted for that load.
Sutton's story is that the government's first contact establishing Aldrete-Davila was the run-away drug smuggler came from a Mexican attorney representing him, in an offer of testimony in exchange for immunity.
The prosecutor contends the government could not prosecute Aldrete-Davila because it could not identify him.
WND: People are going to say once the guy came forward, regardless why he came forward, you knew it was him. You could go get him. He made an admission.SUTTON: But, remember, he didn't make an admission. He refused to make an admission until his lawyer had an agreement for use immunity. He wouldn't come to the United States and we couldn't extradite him because, number one, we didn't have any evidence against him, and, number two, we didn't have a case. It's one of those situations where we gave up very little by giving him use immunity in this case because we couldn't prove a case against him. He did not make admissions until we agreed to give him immunity for what he was saying. We're in a terrible dilemma. We've got a corrupt drug runner and we've got corrupt officers who committed serious crimes and covered them up. We can either let everyone go free, or you can prosecute the one case that is prosecutable, which is serious and that involves the officers. Unfortunately, the case against Aldrete-Davila was not prosecutable because of these agents. There was no way to link Aldrete-Davila with that load of marijuana.
According to Ramirez's account, however, the identity of the drug smuggler was known to agent Rene Sanchez, who passed the information on to DHS agent Chris Sanchez.
Apparently, Sanchez even went to Mexico to work with Aldrete-Davila and his family, which Ramirez argues should have given the prosecution ample probable cause to make the link between the 743-pound load of marijuana brought into the U.S. and Aldrete-Davila as the perpetrator.
Still, in the Jan. 19 interview, Sutton insisted his office had no choice but to give the drug smuggler immunity.
He (Aldrete-Davila) wasn't going to agree to come to the United States, he wasn't going to agree to talk, unless he had some kind of immunity from being prosecuted for that load. So, that puts the prosecutor in the terrible choice of everyone goes free, we got no case against the dope dealer, we cannot make a case against the dope dealer because there's no evidence thanks to agents and other factors. And we've got two agents on the line who we know have lied, covered up evidence, shot 15 times at an unarmed suspect running away. So we had to make a decision and there very difficult to make. Prosecutors in this country make those decisions every day. In some instances, we have to give what is known as "use immunity," which allows whatever that person says in court not to be used against them. Now, if I could prove up the case another way, without using the words of Aldrete-Davila himself, we could prosecute the case. If I had a provable case that Aldrete-Davila had committed other crimes, I could prosecute him.
This is a very convincing account, and utterly damning of the conduct of baseball-playin', Bush-lovin' elitist lawyer Sutton. If the story is true, the Border Patrol does indeed have corrupt officers, but Compean and Ramos are not among them. Acting on good instincts, they recognized a smuggler and acted as a team to capture him. Maybe they got carrried away during the chaos and adrenaline-rich frenzy of the encounter, but in no way do they deserve 12 years in jail. It would be hard to imagine a more effective way to demoralize the Border Patrol and encourage the Mexican crime syndicates than the acts of Sutton. He could have simply written off the affair as a bungled arrest, but he took extraordinary measures, basically buying the services of a career criminal in order to destroy a couple of zealous law enforcement officers. Keep in mind that Sutton works for the same Injustice Dept. which let Sandy Burglar walk after stealing classified documents from the National Archives. That Dept. is a travesty, and Bush has done nothing to clean it up.
Thanks for the article. The more we read about this prosecution the smellier it gets. Free the perps, jail the LEOs.
Based on what I've read, the illegal in question was fleeing, trying to get back to the border. Also, the agents in question refused his prior efforts to surrender.
If those things are correct, then they are most certainly guilty in the shooting and should be in jail.
It is based on "testimony" of Ramirez. Was he an eyewitness to the events of the day? no. Was he part of the investigation? no. Did he serve on the prosecution team? no. What is he "testifying under oath" to? His own opinion of the events, based on his own reading of the evidence of the case. He is the story-teller. I have no doubt he faithfully tells his side of the story.
As to the actual facts given, first there is nothing new in this article. We already knew every single fact, despite the article starting with the words 'New evidence'.
The article asserts things it then cannot back up For example, it says "New evidence suggests prosecuting U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of El Paso lied about how the government found the fleeing illegal alien Mexican drug smuggler", but later says "Now, in the context of the information provided by Andy Ramirez about the connection between agent Rene Sanchez and Aldrete-Davila's families in Mexico, Sutton's comment apparently corroborate Ramirez's account".
Sutton's claim, as quoted in this article, was "So, the only way to get him to testify was to give him immunity from being prosecuted. He wasn't going to agree to come to the United States, he wasn't going to agree to talk, unless he had some kind of immunity from being prosecuted for that load."
The author then misleads the reader, suggesting that this is a lie because According to Ramirez's account, however, the identity of the drug smuggler was known to agent Rene Sanchez, who passed the information on to DHS agent Chris Sanchez.
Well, that isn't just Ramirez' account, that's the official account from Sutton's office. Sutton doesn't deny that, he SAYS it. We all know that Davila's story was first broken by Rene Sanchez, a BP agent who heard it from his mother who heard it from Davila's mother, and that they all "knew each other".
The problem is that having HEARD a story 3rd-hand is not the same as having evidence to be used in court. The would need a 1st-hand confession, or at least a direct statement from an eye-witness to a confession. Rene only had the word of the guy's mother, who obviously wouldn't have testified against him. The guy wouldn't have testified against himself. THAT is what the quote from Sutton says -- NOT that they could never have known about the guy unless he came forward, or that they didn't learn the guy existed until the lawyer came forward -- WND admits Sutton accurately tells that part of the story (the quotes above).
What Sutton says here, and it is true, is that the drug smuggler would not confess to being there without immunity from saying so, and without his statement of being there, they had no evidence that would prove he was there.
WND suggests that, armed with nothing more than a 3rd-hand hearsay about a shooting, we could get the Mexican government to extradite the man against his will to extract the bullet. Then somehow the bullet, which WND argues cannot be tied to Ramos's gun, and which in fact WND also argues elsewhere was NOT from Ramos's gun, would somehow tie the drug smuggler to the drugs in the van.
WND ignores that the two agents could not identify the man, so they had no eyewitness drawing to show the mexicans to gain a warrant for extradition.
How would the BP agent folks feel if random americans were extradicted to mexico on the testimony of mexican federale that "my mother heard from the guy's mother that he was a criminal."
Of course, this is a doubly-devious misdirection. Not only is their argument specious, it is also tangential. It isn't mean to refute ANY of the actual evidence in the case, it is only meant to impugn the credibility of the prosecuter (who of course is not a witness in the case).
WND of course also broadside's the other BP agents involved, because they too must be discredited.
It's not damning at all. Cut through the rhetoric and opinion, and the facts provided are consistent with the two BP agents shooting a fleeing man who they had no evidence of being a criminal, and then covering up their crime and lying about in in official, signed statements.
The facts also support Sutton's statements. Ramirez of course is not a first-hand witness to ANY of the facts of the case, and is simply repeating what he has read and heard, but even WND has to acknowledge that Sutton's statements, read in context, are consistent with the facts presented by Ramirez (many of which come FROM Sutton, although WND tries to suggests Sutton was hiding them, like the fact that Rene was the one to start the investigation).
There's nothing new here, every fact in the article was known weeks ago.
Is this thing on?
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txw/press_releases/2006/Sutton%20statement%20re%20compean%20and%20ramos%20conviction.pdf
It's supported by evidence and the testimony of border agents on the scene, including the testimony of Ramos and Compean.
The testimony against them was presented under oath. The evidence and testimony cross examined by the defense.
Twelve jurors then unanimously convicted them on 11 counts.
In this article we have WND, which is hardly a reliable source known for vetting what people telling them, presenting what Andy Ramirez, chairman of Friends of the Border Patrol has to say.
He says Sutton lied about how the government found Aldrete-Davila. He says the story about a Mexican lawyer is false.
Well, even if it is false and Sutton was leaving out where the initial tip came from to protect the identity of the person providing that tip, it's hardly relevant to the facts in the case.
"If the truth about how the government got their hands on Aldrete-Davila had been told to the jury, there is no way the jury would have believed a word of his story that he was unarmed."
It's very unlikely that the jury was taking the word of a drug smuggler that he was unarmed. It's a lot more likely that they were relying on Compean's and Ramos' own testimony indicating that Aldrete-Davila was unarmed. Maybe they were also considering the fact that their reports never said that he was armed and that they never warned other agents that the suspect was armed.
Aldrete-Davila belongs in jail for his crimes. However, even if the agents never really had a chance to detain him, and he merely eluded them, there is no way the government is going to be able to extradite him from Mexico for drug smuggling or have much hope of getting a conviction when there was obviously a variety of false statements in the report on the incident by the agents.
Even if the government didn't give him immunity for his criminal actions on that day, they didn't have any hope of prosecuting him because of the actions of and the false statements made by the agents.
The key thing that the government got from giving Aldrete-Davila immunity wasn't his testimony, it was the bullet out of his ass.
That evidence showed the government that there was credible evidence that they had a serious problem with at least one of their agents, and following the evidence from there let to the indictment, trial, and conviction of Ramos and Compean.
I believe in giving law enforcement the benefit of the doubt, because they are forced to deal with the dregs of society who have a vested interest in telling lies about them.
Sutton's comments that the agents didn't know Aldrete-Davila was smuggling drugs or that he was in the country illegally doesn't bear much weight either, since he fled from the border patrol agents (leaving behind the vehicle) they had reason to suspect him of being involved with serious criminal activity.
If the agents had so much as reported that he was armed to the other agents at the scene I'd have to take their word over the word of a criminal.
However, all the evidence points to Aldrete-Davila not being armed. There even appears to be evidence supporting the allegation that Compean assaulted him after he surrendered, though what little evidence was provided regarding that is far less compelling. We don't really know what evidence was provided in the court case regarding that, but twelve jurors unanimously convicted these two agents, and from what I've seen presented by the two sides, the jurors had good reason to reach that verdict.
As much as it seems important to freepers to fight for these two men, there are much more important issues to be handled. I believe freepdom (me included) has allowed ourselves to be distracted with petty bickering from the real threat -- losing the war on terror due to the democrat majority.
I urge everybody involved to stop regurgitating WND press releases, and instead read the just-released Citizens Report on Iraq, an 80-something page compilation of why we are winning in Iraq, and what we need to do. I thank all the FR contributers to this document for putting it out for us, and for reminding us who the REAL enemy is.
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Huh?
In the article at the address below, it was said the illegal alien tried to surrender, and those efforts were ignored by the agents.
Sorry, I haven't tried to post a link before, and haven't figured out how.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1775578/posts
Have you been following the incident with the BP agent who killed an illegal recently...Fox news just interviewed top agent who is accusing bosses of allowing Mexican officials into the detainment area to question BEFORE we were allowed to do so? I think that's right...but I havent' seen anything here on it yet.
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