I think Ramos got screwed. I think he thought Compean was in trouble, and when he saw Compean on the ground he took a shot. Then he realized there was no threat, and then he realized he might be in trouble.
As the 2nd shooter, he could have said that since Compean had shot, he assumed there was a threat, and that when he saw Compean his first impression was that Compean had been hit.
I would think a jury would have accepted that, especially since there was no other evidence that Ramos meant any harm, and since he only took a single shot. But that would have put the entire onus on Compean to prove there was a threat.
And I think if he had just reported the incident, he would have been fine.
Instead, he fed into the cover-up, which made him look guilty. In my opinion he did so because the two of them decided since the guy was gone, and nobody else was going to say anything, that it would be best for them to just keep quiet.
Then, when they were caught, I think he still could have gotten off or had a minor conviction if he had said he shot because Compean had shot. But it helped Compean for Ramos to say he saw a gun — or it least it would have if the jury had believed them.
Ramos is the most pure of all of the testimonies. He told his story one time. That was on the stand. No other testimony contradicted his except for some extraneous hand signal introduced by the known liar Juarez. That "hand signal" had to do with the emergency lights on Juarez vehicle according to Juarez. The event at the ditch and vega happened in a minute or so. When Ramos crested the levee on his way back, he saw nearly the whole Fabens contingent there at the scene. He knew that more agents arrived while he was on the north side of the ditch and before he began his "rescue" run. He testified so. It is then quite easy to erroneously assume that everyone knew about the pistol firing. They had heard the shots, corroborated by testimony, and they would have known that something was going on. The mistake was that in the excitement Ramos did not say "I shot my pistol." That would have been(assumed) known.
Ramos shot because Davila turned and pointed his hand(empty or not) at Ramos. It might have been to flip the bird. Nonetheless, Ramos saw a fugitive who failed to comply with instructions, and his partner down(not standing). He heard shots and did not know who shot what. He had just run through a ditch, over a levee, and down just past the not-standing Compean. He did not have the luxury of stopping to peruse the scene and determine exactly what happened. When Davila turned while running, he received the action that I would have performed. He got shot. The wound path is very consistent with what Ramos described. Davila fell right at the edge of the river, and Ramos and Compean were just to the river's side of the drag road with Ramos a few yards closer than Compean. Ramos and Compean's testimony place them together on the vega, and Davila corroborates that. When Compean and Davila began their run, Ramos had just entered the ditch. Davila did not walk to the river so Compean and Davila were a distance from Ramos. The time Davila took to reach the river was the same time that it took Ramos to finish climbing out of the ditch(he heard all the shots while in the ditch), run over the levee then past Compean, yell stop, see Davila turn, and fire the single shot he performed. That time was measured in seconds. The wound trajectory corroborates Ramos.
The fact that two agents both fired at the same guy indicates to me that the guy did something to deserve the action. These agents did not plan or otherwise consult each other to devise a plan of action against Davila(the prosecution and its defenders have tried to characterize the agents in such a way that the action they performed was an expected outcome. It was not) Compean was on duty, and Ramos was eating lunch when the encounter began. Ramos used his skills as an agent to join the chase of Davila, and his biggest mistake was to try to do the duty for which he raised his hand. A good deed never goes unpunished.