Posted on 02/10/2007 2:05:41 PM PST by TheeOhioInfidel
For an agent of the Mexican government, Johnny Sutton speaks pretty good English.
That's the title anti-immigrant zealots hung on the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas after prosecutors in his office convicted ex-Border Patrol agents Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos of shooting 15 times at an unarmed suspect who was running away.
Sentenced to 12 years and 11 years in prison, the former agents are behind bars.
Because the defendants were once Border Patrol agents and because the convictions relied on testimony from the victim - a Mexican drug smuggler who got immunity - the prosecutors have become absolutely toxic in the minds of those who think an invasion is under way and that Border Patrol agents are the sentries against the tide.
Hence the accusation by some that Sutton - along with his bosses, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President Bush - has become an agent of the Mexican government.
"We just evaluate the facts," Sutton said. "We don't get to choose the facts. We don't get to choose the witnesses. We just have to decide whether a crime was committed and whether it's appropriate that it be prosecuted."
According to the evidence presented at the trial, including the agents' testimony and their statements after the incident, here are the facts.
On Feb. 17, 2005, about 1 p.m., Compean and Ramos were on duty along the U.S.-Mexico border when they observed a suspicious vehicle - a van that turned out to be loaded with 700 pounds of marijuana.
The driver - later identified as Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila - jumped out of the vehicle and tried to run back into Mexico.
Ramos and Compean testified they made a point of looking at the suspect's hands and saw no weapon. Compean fired at least 14 rounds and Ramos fired once.
Ramos wounded the suspect and saw him limp into Mexico. The agents collected the shell casings and filed false reports, trying to cover up the incident.
The case has become a cause célèbre for radio talk-show hosts, anti-immigrant groups, congressional Republicans, Minuteman vigilantes and cable television talkers with a knack for turning ranting into ratings.
The convictions also have been sucked into the wind tunnel of the immigration debate and turned Republican hard-liners into bleeding hearts.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, wrote a resolution demanding that Bush pardon Compean and Ramos.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, has called Bush a "disgrace" and someone who is "on the side of our enemies."
Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach - who used to be a lobbyist for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nativist organization that wants to limit even legal immigration - quipped that, since Bush wants amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants, he should simply add two more names to the list.
Basically, Bilbray lumped together former Border Patrol agents with illegal immigrants. What would the two have in common? Only Spanish surnames.
Apparently, you can take the congressman out of the nativist group but you can't take the nativism out of the congressman.
I asked Sutton about the insistence by some that this case illustrates the contempt the Bush administration has for border security and the Border Patrol.
"I don't take it too seriously," he said. "I'm a federal prosecutor in charge of prosecuting drugs and immigration for 660 miles of Mexican-Texas border. I'm in the business of locking up illegal aliens who come across and drug smugglers who come across, and so I work with Border Patrol day in and day out."
Sutton said he has a lot of respect for the Border Patrol and its responsibilities.
"They do have a very, very hard job," he said. "And 99.9 percent of them are out there doing it right, abiding by the rules in these very stressful situations, and they're doing just fine. But when you're in those kinds of high-stress situations, you can make big mistakes."
By all accounts, these agents made big mistakes. The same goes for those who are shamelessly using this sad case to advance their own agendas.
"It's just so rare that you have a situation like this," Sutton said. "But (Border Patrol agents) are human beings, and sometimes, just like anyone else, they're going to step over the line, and if they commit crimes, just like everybody else, they're not above the law."
Bush has said he will examine the case and determine if a pardon is warranted.
It isn't.
Navarrette is a columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune. His e-mail address is ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com.
"am I alone in this bothering me?" Hopefully, yes!
Hey Ruben Navarrette, since the trial transcripts haven't released, let's have a source for this so we can be sure it's not from the same Johnny Sutton who also lied when he claimed the illegal drug smuggler was shot in the back.
Ramos wounded the suspect and saw him limp into Mexico. The agents collected the shell casings and filed false reports, trying to cover up the incident.
Again, please source this incriminating statement that could only have come from Mr. Ramos. Every other report I've read said the illegal drug smuggler ran back to Mexico seemingly uninjured.
no
Who is the Reubin Navarette guy who wrote this article? From everything else I have read this statement is a lie. All the articles I have read said they thought they saw him with a gun in his hand. Besides who believes that a drug runner would be running drugs without carring a wheapon? NOT ME!
What reports? WND? The info. I read, from the D.A.'s office (your pal J.Sutton), states they shot him, hit him in the bootoks, and left him laying were he fell. Then picked up the spent brass.
You're correct, I didn't mean to cut and paste the second sentence.
Also a poor choice of words, I was trying to point out that only Ramos knows what Ramos saw, and every report I've seen indicated that the illegal drug smuggler easily ran back into Mexico seemingly uninjured.
To be fair, that type of abuse is exactly how adversarial courts work. A legal system, not a justice system.
If anybody should be put in gen-pop, it's the criminal prosecutor for violating their civil rights and the criminal warden for participating in a criminal cover-up of the beating of Ramos and not allowing him to have medical treatment for his injuries. Both of them deserve to be prags.
No no, not my pal. Tar & feathers followed by running him into Mexico on a rail is far too good for Johnny Sutton.
I may have been unclear, but as I have since clarified, I am firmly and absolutely on the side of the Border Patrol Agents Messrs. Ramos & Compean.
"Am I alone in this bothering me?"
No, the fact that these guys attempted to cover up evidence bothers me also. This is not a cut and dried case on either side. The drug smuggler got shot attempting to bring his poison into the U.S. and in my opinion got what he deserved. The Border Patrol Agents proved they were not rocket scientists by romoving evidence from the scene, so they got what they deserved, no one is above the law, and these guys know that.
There has been dozens of threads on this, look them up and read them, make up your own mind.
And publish a Carl Levin press release as Pentagon consensus.
And even then, with the redactions, we still won't know. Why the redactions?
What the borders are now some kind of national security issue? LOL !
WND has and admits what's motivating their coverage, ie their bias. The real question is is what is motivating Sutton? Drug money, a wide open boarder preference from DC, blackmail or (it is a long shot) integrity?
The latter seems less plausible considering:
Only an fool would not question Sutton and what is really going on. The facts right now seem to be a casualty of someones agenda. Transcripts please - oh and pardon the agents!
No but the facts are skewered by the irrationalogues. Such as above the poster states that the supervisors were present during the shooting. They were not. They were at the scene of the shooting to investigate the van and the getaway of the smuggler. Nobody told them about the shooting and the shell casing evidence had been removed.
The National Gaurd is running away from the armed criminals, because they can't defend themselves.
The Mexican government is furnishing Spanish text books to border state American students which include references to taking the territory back to Mexican hands (Texas, NMex, Ariz, and, of course Kalifornistan)
This Country has gone nuts, and as a Texan and long time supporter of the POTUS, I cannot forgive him for not digging in his heels.
Of course the downside is that the legal and illegals vote rat, taking the Country into the abyss of socialism or worse with Osama Obama or the sheSatan.
Bull!! Illegal aliens are above the law. Why isn't the George Bush administration enforcing our immigration laws? It could enforce existing employer sanction laws and identity theft laws and millions of illegals would self deport
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