Former Sheriff's Deputy Has No Regrets - Gilmer Hernandez Released!

ROCKSPRINGS — When he left home late last year for a jail cell, Gilmer Hernandez was a little known rural Texas deputy charged with shooting into a carload of undocumented immigrants during a late night stop.

By the time he returned Monday, after 10 months behind bars for violating the civil rights of a woman injured in the shooting, Hernandez had become a national poster boy for conservatives in the bitter ongoing national debate over immigration.

To many, it was proof that undocumented immigrants have more rights than U.S. lawmen.

Columnists such as Ann Coulter and Phyllis Schlafly cited his case, as did primetime television pontificators like Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity.

Focusing on the U.S. attorney who sent Hernandez to jail, protest groups vilified Johnny Sutton as "Johnny Satan" and "public enemy No. 1."

But Monday afternoon, all such raucous partisan discourse was very distant when Hernandez walked into his living room, his wife, Ashley, on his arm, for the first time in almost a year.

"I'm home," he said, giving his father-in-law, Jose Arredondo, a long, muscular hug. He then gingerly held his year-old daughter, Alektra, who predictably squawked in protest.

"I'm still the same guy. I'm not going to let this bring me down," he said. "I'd like to thank everybody who wrote me letters and supported my family. It meant a lot to me. It meant I wasn't alone."

A little bit later, downtown Rocksprings became a Gilmer Hernandez welcome home carnival as the entire student body at the school complex, plus dozens of local residents, turned out to greet him.

More than 350 people crowded around the front of the school, blocking traffic, waiting to pay their respects to a local guy who had once taught as a substitute teacher there.

"Like the signs say, Gilmer is free and a favorite son has come home," said Tooter Smith, a photographer for the local Mohair Weekly.

One of the first to meet him outside the school was his old boss, Edwards County Sheriff Don Letsinger, who had suffered along with Hernandez during the federal investigation and trial.

"I told him I loved him and I'm proud of him," the sheriff said. "He stood up for what he believed in."

Hernandez, 26, who cannot serve in law enforcement again because of the conviction, said he had no second thoughts about how he reacted on April 14, 2005, in the incident that changed his life.

"It happened in a split second. I was in fear of my life. I did what I was trained to do," he said.

It all began with a late-night traffic stop after Hernandez spotted a dark Chevrolet Suburban running a downtown stop sign in his hometown. Unpretentious and peaceful by day, Rocksprings falls on a main smuggling route from the border, and after dark, unpredictable strangers often pass through town.

The car Hernandez stopped was full of people, and when he attempted to speak to the driver, he said, the vehicle abruptly pulled away, trying to run him over.

Hernandez shot between four and six times at the fleeing vehicle, blowing out a tire but hitting the back of the Suburban several times and slightly wounding a female passenger.

When the vehicle stopped a short way up the road, all the occupants but the woman fled. Two of the immigrants would later sue the county over the shooting and be awarded $100,000 each.

Hernandez, however, was charged with violating the wounded woman's civil rights. He was convicted, despite his claims of acting in self-defense.

"I had been offered six months' probation but I wouldn't take the plea bargain. They wanted me to change my report about what happened," he said. "The conviction felt unreal. I couldn't believe the verdict."

But, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Baumann said last year, "The law says you cannot use deadly force to stop a car unless it poses an imminent threat to the officer or another person. If the car is going away from you, it's not even a close call."

Quickly, he, along with Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, both U.S. Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting an unarmed Mexican drug smuggler, became cause celebres in the national immigration debate.

Hernandez, who could have been sentenced to nine years, instead got a year with time off for good behavior. He tracked the immigration debate as best he could from his cells in Texas, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

"I felt like I was being used by all the politicians as an example. And they were right to use me," he said.

And even though his future apparently lies with the phone company, which has offered him a job, Hernandez and his wife both say they will continue to speak out on the issue.

"They might have taken his career away, his dream away, but we're still going forward," Ashley Hernandez said.

"It was a terrible thing, but it was also a great thing for the community," the sheriff said as he stood outside the crowded school. "Everyone came together. Look at these kids. They know what is going on."

He should have regrets. There were women and children in that van, and he could easily have killed several of them. And while I know how much we all hate illegal immigrants, I have to think the guy would have had trouble living with the idea that he had killed some 5-year-old whose only crime was having a mother who brought her into the country illegally.

This story actually seems to tell the facts pretty clearly, and it's clear his actions were wrong:

The car Hernandez stopped was full of people, and when he attempted to speak to the driver, he said, the vehicle abruptly pulled away, trying to run him over.
Hernandez shot between four and six times at the fleeing vehicle, blowing out a tire but hitting the back of the Suburban several times and slightly wounding a female passenger.

You could argue that if the van was coming at him, he had a right to shoot at it. In many jurisdictions, the police are taught how not to put themselves in harm's way from a vehicle, and are strongly discouraged from using deadly force.

But in this case, Hernandez admits he shot at the back of a fleeing van. A van driving away from you is no threat to you. Shooting at the van to stop it endangered the lives of the passengers, who at that time were not known to have committed ANY crime. If there had been an american citizen walking down the street, he could have hit the bystander killing them as well, either directly or from a ricochet.

Deadly force was inappropriate, as at least three courts decided, two deciding for passengers in a civil case, and the one which convicted Hernandez.

Two of the immigrants would later sue the county over the shooting and be awarded $100,000 each.
Hernandez, however, was charged with violating the wounded woman's civil rights. He was convicted, despite his claims of acting in self-defense.

He shot a woman who posed no threat to him, and who he had no idea was illegal, or had committed any criminal act. He could have killed her, all to stop a van driving away.

There's a lot of support for him because the van was full of people who are assumed to be illegal (we don't know for certain because we only know of the three people -- and this particular story doesn't even tell us if the two who sued were legal or illegal, it just calls them "immigrants").

So the first question is, what if you and your family and some friends were driving in a large van, your neighbor's driving and he runs a stop sign. A cop comes up and it turns out he's got unpaid parking tickets and some moving violations and he'll lose his license. So he panics and drives away.

The officer, mad at losing the collar, fires six shots at the back of the van. When he's done, your wife is dead, your son is paralyzed, and your daughter is bleeding out from a gut wound.

How many of your are saying "The officer was perfectly justified in shooting us, because the guy shouldn't have driven away?

But of course, you are all american citizens. Does that make a difference? If it wouldn't be OK for the officer to kill your wife and shoot your children, WHY would it be OK for them to do so to illegal immigrants? Is being an illegal immigrant a capital offense?

The attorney in charge makes it clear:

But, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Baumann said last year, "The law says you cannot use deadly force to stop a car unless it poses an imminent threat to the officer or another person. If the car is going away from you, it's not even a close call."

I am happy he went after a vanload of what he thought were illegal immigrants. I'd be happy if he had arrested them all, and they were deported.

But I don't want police shooting at the backs of fleeing vans full of people, when there is no evidence that those in the van are life-threatening. If the driver was a known mass murderer, I might think differently. But in this case, the only thing the officer knew was the van drove through a stop sign on a deserted street, and then drove away when he tried to question them (possibly in a manner that at first put the officer in danger -- so I would have no trouble if the officer had apprehended the driver and charged him with attempted murder.

I know this will incense those who think Sutton should be hanged, and Bush impeached, and the Gonzales family locked up.

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