Posted on 11/24/2007 5:16:09 AM PST by Salena Zito
... & pardon these 2 Saturday, November 24, 2007
The degrading, draconian and disgraceful incarceration of former Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean indicates President George W. Bush, the self-anointed compassionate conservative, is capable of stone-cold stupidity. By doing their duty along the near-lawless border with Mexico, Messrs. Ramos and Compean have become tragic symbols of this nation's gross incompetence regarding enforcement of immigration law.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
PING! I missed this one from yesterday.
RAMOS/COMPEAN Ping
Please freepmail me if you want on or off this list.
“Testimony is that he limped away,”
Testimony of who?
Thank you!
You are welcome.
What more needs to be proven to pardon these agents.
This is ridiculous.
Short and to the point: These two agents should be pardoned!
Isn’t it interesting some folks have no knowledge about our legal system.
They are rooted in:
the Napoleonic Code - de facto presumption of guilt
If the agents would have driven a gal off a bridge and let her drown, they would be free.
Actually, the thread you are joining is not about opinion. It’s about whether the illegal was injured seriously enough to require medical treatment. That’s a simple fact, backed by the court testimony of the doctors that treated him.
As to the specific post you are replying to, it also was not an opinion, but a simple correction of a mistaken response which mis-stated my comment. My comment was accurate, and the person re-worded my response in order to complain that their re-wording was misleading, which it was both because it was wrong, and because it wasn’t what I said.
So in this instance, your statement about “misguided opinion” is an irrelevant opinion unrelated to the discussion.
At least you were smart enough to ping someone who actually knows the facts. I’m certain if I’ve made any minor error she will be happy to correct it, and I will be glad to be held to a standard that nobody on the C/R side could hope to meet.
Others should be warned that some people take complex subjects and reduce them to soundbites. For the purpose of this discussion, my opinion regarding amnesty is irrelevant, as I do not support amnesty for drug smugglers or people who sneak over the border and are caught.
My opinion is much closer to Fred Thompson’s position than what people would typically think of as pro-amnesty. But I’ve always said that if people want to put labels on a subject rather than discuss it, go right ahead, it contributes nothing but some people don’t really want to contribute.
“Now. Where is that conservative Republican?”
DUNCAN HUNTER!!
But apparently the American people still have a bad case of the stupids.
So one guy tries to convince me that the fact that Ramos’s shot went from left to right proves the drug smuggler was turning to shoot at him.
And you are arguing that he wasn’t shot at all.
At least you are two different people. WND tried to argue those to things as facts in the SAME ARTICLE once. “The bullet trajectory proves he was shot while turning, and there’s no evidence he was shot at all”.
In fact, the bullet was matched by ballistics testing.
However, WND, in it’s zeal to defend the BP agents, printed deliberately misleading stories to confuse people like you.
In this case, there were two tests. The first is a cheap and easy test used to ELIMINATE” broad classes of handguns. If you can eliminate the type of gun used by the BP agents, you don’t have to check the actual bullets.
However, the first test DID match the type of gun. That test of course did NOT prove the bullet matched Ramos’ gun, because that test is not meant to prove that.
So WND wrote a story which said “the ballistic test does not show bullet came from Ramos’ gun”. Which is literally true, the 1st test did not, but the way they used that was to suggest that there was no test which matched the gun.
In fact, a second tests was done, the bullet did match, and Ramos’s defense stipulated to that fact for the trial, obviating the need to pay an expert to come to the court and testify that it was his bullet.
Some mistakenly think that the lack of testimony proves there was no evidence, and when they are told they are wrong they insist that Ramos’ attorney was somehow incompetent to not challenge the test (because they are confused by the WND article).
If there was any doubt about the bullet testimony, it would have been included in the appeal.
BTW, the crime they were charged with was shooting at the guy, not hitting him. Note that Compean got more time than Ramos, even though Ramos hit him and Compean did not.
So in fact you are wrong about the evidence, and also have fallen for a false argument which has no consequence in any case regarding the trial and conviction.
Maybe if he really wanted medical treatment, he would have showed up for his surgery appointment on October 24th, 2005 at Brooks Army Medical Center instead of hanging out with Cipriano-Ortiz-Hernandez and sitting on a few hundred pounds of drugs.
People ain’t buying the twisted version of the story you are selling.
Tell us again how he was “just a mule” trying to raise money for his poor sick mother. BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
After reading the thread, I have concluded your description is too kind (IMO).
US Attorney Johnny Sutton or his assistant(s) took the illegal drug smugglers side and told a tale they knew to be false, that this was a one time thing, done only to help pay for medical help for his poor mother.
Do you know how such lies, told by a US Attorney sways a jury?
Digging deeper into this..it looks like Johnny Sutton has a willing accomplice in Judge Kathleen Cardone, previously a Family Court Judge and appointed to the Federal Bench in El Paso by- who else?- Geo Bush in May 2003, confirmed by the Senate in July 2003...Was she fast tracked by the Dems ?...did they know something ?
This first URL gives a capsule biography of Judge Kathlkeen Cardone
http://alumni.binghamton.edu/AJ/2004/summer/profile01.htm
This 2nd URL points out the connection between Sutton and Cardone..a real lock-em-up team- freeing criminals while jailing BP agents Ramos and Compean !.
http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/002335.html
This third URL is the sentencing Transcript from the Jury Trial..Looks like the Judge fell back on Mandatory Sentencing in the use of a firearm- notwithstanding that the 2 law enforcement men were doing the legal firing at an illegal who would not identify himself and then tried to run away.
Finally we have Sutton’s words directly..Here he seems to imply that he knows the BP Agents acuser-Aldrete-Davila is a drug dealer but he says he needed Aldeste to come back to the States from Mexico and give a statement so he could prosecure the only case he had grounds for prosecution for !!..Sutton knew by then that Aldrete-Davila had 700 pounds of drugs in his vehicle when he was stopped by the two BP agents, but the agents did not know that at the time..So he was out to nail the 2 BP Agents because he said they were the only ones who committed crimes that he could persecute....He could not prosecute Aldrete once he was back in Mexico and once his attorney had secured an immunity from prosecution for Aldrete’s testimony...Here is an excerpt of the interview and the URL follows that..
“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.”
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53856
Do you smell the Limburger yet ? Makes you wonder what makes the wheels spin for Sutton and Cardone ?...Fame, money, Power, higher political ambition?..or a true sense of Justice (barf alert)....he continually calls the BP agents ‘criminals’ rather than law enforcement agents for their actions that day..This Prosecutor is way over-zealous and something isn’t right ...From the sentencing transcript, looks like the Judge is quite set in not allowing any leeway in the sentencing quidelines, and there is nothing to indicate mitigating factors.. A Travesty
1) Nobody reported a gun until they were arrested.
2) No shots were fired
3) No gun was found at the scene
4) No record of a gun purchase was presented
5) Neither BP agent would testify that he had a gun, only that they thought they saw one.
I hate to break it to you, but none of this is "evidence" that he didn't have a gun.
Do I have to do all the work for you?
OK. I assume you know how to get the pdf’s of the testimony. I have them on my hard drive, but they’ve been posted here before.
Start with PDF volume%2010.pdf, page 136, line 14, Yrigoyen. This is a weak one, the prosecution asks if he saw him limping, but the testimony is that Yrigoyen thought he was stumbling through a cultivated field.
Next, file volume%2012.pdf, page 37, Chris Sanchez, line 25, discussing Compean’s statements during the investigation: “He observed Aldrete-Davila limping, and assumed he had been shot.”
In volume2013.pdf, page 80, line 9, the prosecuter can’t get Ramos to say he was limping, although Ramos earlier admitted that Compean had told several others that he was limping. He did say they observed the guy in Mexico walking, not running.
Then in the same volume page 175, line 11, Compean’s direct testimony: “When I saw him climb out, he looked like he was limping”. Compean said he didn’t think Ramos had hit him, and thought he was limping because of jumping out of the van or something.
Then on cross, he mentioned limping some more, starting in volume%2014.pdf page 144 line 17.
I hope this was helpful. Remember this next time some other Freeper insists that I don’t know the facts.
All of it is evidence that he didn’t have a gun. If any of them were false, it would be evidence that he had a gun.
In only one sense are you correct, in the sense that without actually doing a strip search you can’t possible be absolutely sure that any person isn’t packing a gun or a small nuclear device.
But the absense of any evidence for a gun is evidence that there was not a gun. If there was a gun, there is a probability that one of those items would be false. The fact that they are all true is logical evidence lowering the probability that he had a gun.
In the trial, the defense needed to plant a reasonable suspicion that the defendant had a gun and was holding it in his hand which threatened them. 12 members of the jury were unconvinced of that, and therefore found they were not shooting in self-defense.
That is how evidence works in a criminal trial. While you must prove beyond a REASONABLE doubt that the defendant committed the crime, you are not required on each point to prove beyond any doubt that the defendant’s story isn’t correct. You merely have to present reasonable evidence.
In this case, the prosecution presented the evidence listed below, along with the fact that the defendant was right-handed while the “object” was reported to have been seen in his left hand.
If you want to insist that you are correct about evidence, I want to warn you now — if you shoot an unarmed man, and then tell him to run away so the police can’t search him, you won’t win your trial by noting that nobody can prove the guy didn’t have a gun. You’ll have to present some evidence he had a gun, and if you can’t, that will be considered evidence he did NOT have a gun.
You may not think it is evidence, but you will be convicted on it nonetheless, much to your shock and chagrin.
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