Today Lou Dobbs had Judge Napolitano on. He has a source in the White House.
I don't remember where he said he got the info but the original story of how this case started is wrong. Originally they said that the drug smuggler had a friendship with a Border Patrol agent and so the case started with contacts through the family.
Judge Napolitano said the case started when the Mexican Consulate contacted someone in the U.S. (I think he said DHS) regarding the shooting of the drug runner.
If that is true......just dam!
These guys should not be in jail. They need to be released immediately.
As far as I'm concerned if you get caught bringing drugs or nasty weapons in to the US you should be shot. Post signs in English, Spanish and Arabic warning people.
Reality can be so strange it needs a reality-check. Does this mean the Mexican government demanded the heads of federal agents to the HOMELAND SECURITY AGENCY, and they passed that onto prosecutors who then gave a litigious drug smuggling perp a get-outta-jail deal while he was concurrently initiating a $5m lawsuit ultimately against you-know-you-who-because-it always is, and so the HSA threw a couple agents to Mexico like some kind of bone?
Mexican Drug Dealer to Sue U.S.
The drug smuggler shot by two U.S. Border Patrol agents is planning to sue the federal government for $5 million. Walter Boyaki, the El Paso, Texas-based attorney for Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, said he will sue the government for wrecking his client’s business.
“Osvaldo was making $100,000 a month from his export/import business,” Boyaki said. “Now he is laid up with an embarrassing and incapacitating injury. We are seeking both compensatory damages for lost profits and punitive damages for the indignities Osvaldo has suffered.”
Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean recently began serving prison sentences after being convicted of shooting Aldrete-Davila. The pair encountered the drug smuggler in February of 2005 driving a van containing 743 pounds of marijuana. When the Mexican tried to flee, the agents shot him in the buttocks.
“They violated my client’s rights,” Boyaki said. “And the damages are mounting up. He’s got customers whose deliveries have been interrupted. This is trashing his business reputation and endangering future sales. His employees are too frightened to carry on in the climate of violence created by out-of-control border guards. They are demanding raises. His family has had to cancel their European vacation. He has no money to buy gifts for his mistress. It’s a real tragedy.”
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Column_Archives.htm
Ping!
To all, I set up a thread with links to the transcripts, for anyone wanting to dig in and discuss the gory details:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1784408/posts
Transcripts of Trial - Border Agents Compean and Ramos
DOJ - U.S. Attorney's Office (Johnny Sutton) ^ | February 13, 2007
Posted on 02/13/2007 6:40:43 PM PST by calcowgirl
More info.
From Feb 13, 2007, Lou Dobbs show:
'Tonight, new developments in the outrageous miscarriage of justice of two imprisoned former Texas Border Patrol agents. Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean have been in jail for nearly four weeks. The two were convicted of shooting and wounding an illegal alien Mexican drug smuggler given immunity by the U.S. Justice Department. Tonight the government finally released long-awaited, long-overdue trial transcripts.
Casey Wian is in Los Angeles with the latest on the new explosive evidence in this incredibly, just bizarre case -- Casey.
CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it sure is bizarre, Lou.
The nearly 3,000 pages of transcripts in the Ramos and Compean case show that even before the trial started, several key rulings went against the Border Patrol agents. For example, defense attorneys wanted to be able to talk about how dangerous the border region is where the agents encountered the illegal alien drug smuggler. It's an area, of course, with a well-documented history of violent confrontations between drug cartels and law enforcement.
But prosecutors objected to that. And the judge agreed. She ordered defense attorneys to refrain from any mention of what she called the alleged dangerousness of the border between the United States and Mexico.
Another passage shows just how eager prosecutors were to grant immunity to Mexican drug smuggler Oscar Aldrete-Davila and throw the book at the Border Patrol agents. Assistant U.S. attorney Debra Kanof said to the judge, "... we basically had to beg him. He didn't want to come and talk to us about this. And so we basically gave him blanket immunity for any drug or immigration crime that he might have been committing on that day."
Agent Compean's defense attorney pointed out how the government could have sought up to 40 years in prison for the drug smuggler. And an attorney for Agent Ramos said the drug smuggler "could be prosecuted for possession of some 700 pounds of marijuana, for smuggling it into the country, for illegally entering the United States. All of these actions are actions which the government apparently has chosen to forgive in order to obtain his testimony against these defendants, the agents."
In fact, prosecutors sought to prevent defense attorneys from even disclosing that Aldrete-Davila was transporting 750 pounds of marijuana when he encountered the Border Patrol agents. The judge did allow those facts into evidence, but only on a limited basis -- Lou.
DOBBS: This is -- this is outrageous. This administration, this Justice Department, the U.S. attorney in El Paso, the western district of Texas, Johnny Sutton, have a lot of explaining to do. Because also clear here is that that drug smuggler, Aldrete-Davila, was, in point in fact -- he had already confessed to drug possession and smuggling six days before he was ultimately given limited use immunity.
And the fact is that the U.S. Justice Department and the person of the attorney general's office did not ask that -- that drug smuggler one question about the drug cartel behind it, the safe houses, the transportation routes, the vehicles or the systems, the distribution of that -- of those drugs. I mean, it is remarkable.
WIAN: It really is, Lou. And there's some more new evidence that came out today that we can talk about, and that's regarding the lies that were told by the Office of Inspector General that were disclosed last week to several members of Congress looking into this case.
They now say, according to notes from members of Congress, this investigation, according to the testimony from the -- not testimony, but according to the statements of the Office of the Inspector General, they say that this investigation began with the Mexican consulate contacting the U.S. government, which contradicts the sworn testimony in this case that the investigation began when a Border Patrol agent in Arizona who had family in Mexico, family of the drug smuggler, was contacted by that drug smuggler.
So there are new questions regarding this case seemingly emerging every day -- Lou.
DOBBS: So one of the -- one of the concerns that we had as we began reporting on this case, Casey, is that the Bush administration has been its want throughout, was playing a political game here in concert with the government of Mexico and the dominant drug cartels on the northern -- the northern Mexican border area below El Paso.
WIAN: That's right. And if this -- if these statements by this Office of Inspector General investigators to these members of Congress are true, it would add credence to that theory. Now, of course we know they have now admittedly lied during that...
DOBBS: On a host of other -- on separate areas.
WIAN: So we don't know who's telling the truth at this point -- Lou.
DOBBS: We do know one thing -- that the United States government is lying and has a lot of explaining to do in this case without, without any qualification whatsoever. And the idea that a federal judge sitting in El Paso Texas, and a prosecutor sitting in El Paso, Texas, absolutely aware that that is one of the most violent zones along the border with Mexico, a very violent border, the judge would refer to it as alleged violence?
WIAN: Yes. She called it -- I believe her words were the "alleged dangerousness of the U.S.-Mexico border." I guess everything we've been doing for the past several years just hasn't registered -- Lou.
DOBBS: Yes. And I'm sure it comes as some shock also to Americans north of that border and to Mexican citizens living south of that border that it's alleged to be dangerous. And I suppose also to the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, who has put out travel warnings to all Americans in the region.
It is just -- all you can do is shake your head. And to what is at best a miscarriage of justice. At worst, something that we will be working very hard to prove.
Thank you very much, Casey Wian.
WIAN: OK.'
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I think it is odd that agent Vasquez found the drug-smuggler's cell phone "connected to the cigarette-lighter".
The phone's connection to the cigarette-lighter suggests that drug-smuggler Davila had been using the van for days; contrary to his testimony (his lying testimony that he did not notice the 750 pounds of marijuana filling the van); or the phone was left as a plant with phone-numbers of a competing drug-cartel, or phone-numbers people out of the phone-book. Mr. Davila would then have had a second phone, which he used to call his friends to pick him up. Mr. Davila would have taken his phone from his pocket before he entered the Rio Grande River to keep it from getting wet, which may have been the shiny object the agents saw, causing them to fire.