Posted on 09/12/2008 6:00:19 AM PDT by kellynla
EL PASO, Texas — Two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a drug smuggler and trying to cover it up have been denied a request for a new hearing.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans denied the request by Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean on Wednesday. The same court upheld the men's convictions in July.
No reason was given for the Wednesday's denial.
Ramos and Compean are each serving sentences of more than 10 years for shooting Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the buttocks while he was fleeing from an abandoned marijuana load in 2005.
Aldrete was sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison for his role in two seperate smuggling efforts later that same year.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
The more immigration reform advocates cling to these two losers, the more unhinged and less focused they become. “
Do you have no sympathy for them? I actually agree that they screwed up. I think it is really unfortunate that they got charged under that stupid firearms statue with the ten year mandatory minimum though. I do not think this is the type of conduct Congress intended to punish when they wrote that vague statute, and I think the prosecutors were jerks for even filing under it. This is all typical though. Prosecutors heap on the charges, stretch the laws as far as possible to add more charges, and then punish people who do not shut up and plead. I bet these two could have pled out on misdemeanor charges.
It was meant to convey the idea that judges have become tyrannical and despotic.
Maybe I should have said: "Black robes are beginning to look like brown shirts."
Perhaps the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals should look into the issue.
Do we know the WHOLE story?
I am sure many of us want to read the trial transcript(s) and see for ourselves if the “guilty verdict is appropriate!
Yep, guilty of protecting you. (if you are an American)
The more immigration reform advocates cling to these two losers, the more unhinged and less focused they become.
You've got it completely backwards as usual. We don't advocate reform. We advocate enforcing the law vis-a-vis immigration.
But because these particular incompetent and criminal officers worked for the border patrol instead of the Shelbyville Township PD and because the drugrunner they tried to execute was an illegal, they are heroes to some.
How does it smell way up there where you have your head?
Common sense? You two half-wits obviously have sub-standard components.
All the other people who think as nobly and rationally as you do are busy trying to find dirt on Sarah Palin.
If you haven't already, you're a little late to this game.
care; not car.
appeals are normally over a flaw in the trial process and not a retrial
i’m afraid the best bet for these guys is a pardon or commutation
Thanks for the really intelligent, well-thought out post.
With individuals like yourself on their side, I'm sure these two crooks will be out of prison in no time.
You can't really enforce some laws and not others though. A jury of their peers found them guilty. I can accept that. What bothers me about this case is the stupid firearms law. The reason they got ten years is because they were convicted under a firearms statute for using a firearm in the commission of a crime. Obviously this was not the sort of conduct Congress intended to punish with this law, and ten years? They got more time then the drug smuggler who got caught twice. The only reason for this is because of that darned firearm statute with the ten year mandatory minimum. The jury found them guilty on the much lesser crime, and therefore they were found guilty of using a firearm in the commission of a crime. One thing we should take from this is that we need to really rethink long mandatory minimums because often they result in unintended and tragic consequences like we saw in this case. If not for the mandatory minimum the judge never would have given these guys anywhere close to ten years.
Because of their incompetence, an illegal drugrunning criminal escaped prosecution.
They endangered me - the only people their actions were designed to protect were themselves. But that also backfired due to their incompetence.
You've got it completely backwards as usual. We don't advocate reform. We advocate enforcing the law vis-a-vis immigration.
The existing Democrat-crafted immigration laws are stupid and counterproductive. They reward sloth and punish industry, and they prioritize blood instead patriotism.
Those laws need to change.
If you advocate nothing more than enforcing the existing broken laws, you're not much help.
Might try to talk my neighbor out of joining the border patrol because out of all of the places where you need “we've got your back” that isn't one of them.
You may very well be right. If we had have sat on that jury we may very well have convicted too. To me the travesty was the sentence. They got hammered with a ten year mandatory sentence for using a firearm in the commission of a crime. The judge had no choice but to give them this sentence because there was a mandatory minimum sentence, and of course the drug smuggler caught twice got less time because that's what the sentencing guidelines called for. If people learn anything from this I'd like to see them learn that long mandatory minimum sentences aren't always such a good thing, that we should have very few of these in our criminal statutes because so often we have cases where the mandatory minimum sentence is way too much when you look at the actual underlying conduct in a particular case.
Attempted murder.
Trying to guard the border?
Is taht what they were trying to do? Given their clowning it's kind of hard to tell.
Trusting their supervisor to file the correct report?
Heh heh.
First, both of them knew that it was their responsibility to file an incident report and furnish their supervisor with it. Not the other way around.
Second, tampering with evidence is even worse than not filing a report.
Aldrete-Davila didn't escape? He didn't get away? Ramos and Compean took him into custody?
Everyone with any familiarity with the case knows that Aldrete-Davila got away.
Which side are you on here?
I am on the side of having border enforcement personnel who do their jobs properly. Who don't let individuals like Aldrete-Davila escape and who do not obviously violate the Fourth Amendment, ensuring that a judge will let the criminal escape.
You haven't turned ACLU/La Raza moonbat on us have you?
Not at all. Championing Ramos and Compean is to champion the wrong way of doing things and to celebrate incompetence.
When you read the trial transcripts you have to wince at what a bad job Compean admits to doing.
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