Posted on 07/17/2007 5:37:55 AM PDT by BGHater
A Senate hearing today into the convictions of two U.S. Border Patrol agents who shot a fleeing drug-smuggling suspect is expected to spark heated debate as the U.S. attorney who brought the charges defends the prosecutions.
U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton will tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that a jury in Texas heard all the evidence against agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean in their shooting of Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila and ruled it was not justified.
"This case is not about illegal immigration but the rule of law," said Mr. Sutton. "After a 2½-week jury trial, these former agents were convicted of shooting at and seriously wounding an unarmed, fleeing suspect who posed no threat to them."
Another witness, T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Counsel (NBPC) who has angrily denounced the prosecution, will challenge the government's case, saying there were only three witnesses to the incident and prosecutors believed Mr. Aldrete-Davila over the two agents.
"The only way to conclude that Agents Ramos and Compean should have been prosecuted is if the word of the known drug smuggler is given more credence than the sworn statements of two law-enforcement officers," said Mr. Bonner, whose union represents all 11,000 of the agency's nonsupervisory personnel.
The committee also will hear from Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar, Border Patrol Deputy Chief Luis Barker and Ramos' appellate counsel, David L. Botsford.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security, first raised questions about the prosecutions in February. Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, has ruled she will preside over the hearing.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
It has no legal relevance. It wasn't known by Campos and Ramos at the time of the crime, nor does it bear upon his credibility. Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, uncharged prior bad acts are admissible only if they relate to truthfulness. Drug dealing isn't considered one of those (since you could conceivably be an "honest" drug dealer. Yeah, I know.)
Even if it weren't inadmissible under that Rule, it would still be inadmissible as unduly prejudicial under F.R.E. 403. "He's an illegal drug dealer, so he should have been shot"? That defense just won't fly in any respectable courtroom.
Charges listed by the court begins on page 8 of this transcript Vol. VII
I guess it won’t be televised, since it was supposed to begin at 10:00 EST and it’s not on C-Span right now. Maybe it will be rebroadcast at a later time.
Manadatory sentencing then kicked in.
Are we from the same country? I believe my people (even if their wrong) over a drug smuggling POS. If you check the guards records, they’ve been up for border guard of the year. If they were rotten to the core, something else woud have turned up in their past. Biggest crime was not killing the POS with that one shot, then there wouldn’t be all this downtream activity, and the drug groups would have a lot more respect for the BP because they would know it’s okay to kill drug running POS, and that the government supports those for stopping problems.
Thanks
I can.
Personally, after Shamnesty, I'm fine with the dems if they manage to do the right thing and I'm even better if the courts act to overturn.
GWB is twisting in the wind already and it might get a message across to the rest of the GOP.
I want to know:
Was he shot in the back, the side, or the buttocks?
Since it obviously didn’t kill him, did it even render him immobile?
Was he truly a drug smuggler?
If he got away, could the agents have picked up their brass because they didn’t think they hit anything?
A drug smuggling alien at that. The horror of it that they shot him in the butt. This case is more than rule of law...its about protecting our borders and the Open Border crowd that wants Mexico to join with us.
Juries today are usually made up of the ignorant underclass. They have no capacity for analytical thought because they are no longer taught that in school. They don't really understand the jury system, which includes the concept of innocent until proven guilty. And most of them just want to get done and go home. In this case, was the jury hostile to boarder patrol agents because of cultural biases?
With your best Cheech Marin accent: "If the prosecutor says they're guilty, hey man, who am I to argue. ha ha ha."
And so should the jury.
Jude, the immunity deal given to the smuggler is unprecedented in American jurisprudence. Sutton had no business granting the perp immunity for drug smuggling in exchange for his perjured testimony that he did not have a weapon with him when he was smuggling millions of dollars worth of marijuana across the border.
If this guy had a complaint about being shot, he should have volunteered to testify against the officers who shot him. He refused to testify without a grant of immunity for his own crimes. That is unprecedented. And to top it off, he was smuggling drugs while under the grant of immunity.
Sutton had an axe to grind and an unlimited budget. Does the word Nifong mean anything to you?
Perdogg still doggedly wrong on this case. And you won’t convince him otherwise as he stands on principle. And loses the US as we know it because the US is about to get swamped with illegal immigrants who will change the country forever changing the principles set up to keep this country safe.
They refuse to see the possibility of a conflict of interest. If they really wanted to make it appear fair, they should both recuse themselves from commenting on the case.
"Ramos, 37, and Compean, 28, were sentenced in October to 11- and 12-year prison terms for shooting Mr. Aldrete-Davila in the buttocks after he refused to stop his van and fled on foot into Mexico after abandoning 743 pounds of marijuana. He was located in Mexico by Homeland Security officials and returned to the U.S. under a grant of immunity to testify against the agents.
He was shot in the side of the buttocks, which would be consistent with the officers testimony that he had turned and pointed a weapon at them when they opened fire.
Was he truly a drug smuggler?
He was granted immunity from the drug smuggling charges in exchange for his perjured testimony against the officers.
If he got away, could the agents have picked up their brass because they didn’t think they hit anything?
Since they watched him jump in a van and drive away they had no reason to suspect that they had hit him. The screw up was that they let the drug smuggler escape. Their crime was in not going by the book after this incident. But as anyone in the military will tell you, you only go by the book when you think someone will come along later and ask you why you didn't go by the book.
They picked up the shells while their supervisor watched them. Technically the supervisor was the one who would have been charged with filing the report on the weapon discharge, but he didn't. It is my understanding that if you discharge your weapon and there are other officers present who witness the event, that the person who discharged the weapon is not supposed to author the report on the incident. Nobody wrote a report on the incident. They didn't go by the book. Now everyone is there attempting to cover their own butts while these two guys rot in prison.
Thanks for posting. Good news. Thanks for the links to trial transcripts. Thanks to all contributors. BTTT!
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