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.
That is not a known fact. That is the testimony of Ramos. Davila said different. The jury had to determine which was the truth.
The wound trajectory corroborates Ramos.
The wound trajectory is inconclusive, and supports a man running at an angle to the shooter. This would be true if the man turned, or if the man was running around shrubs.
The turn is the wrong way for Davila if he held his gun in his predominant hand. He would be holding his gun across his body and trying to shoot. Normal would be to stretch your arm out away from your body and backwards, but that would have put his body in the opposite turn.
The two agents gave their testimony at trial, as did Davila. The jury ruled based on that testimony, and the appeals court saw no reversible error, and ruled that the evidence was consistent with the verdict.
The jury could well have chosen to believe Ramos and Compean, and if so to find them not guilty. Since there is no videotape, we will never know what really happened, we will only have the contradictory testimony of the men who were there that day.