Border Agents Who Shot Smuggler Denied Appeal (Ramos & Compean)

newsmax.com ^ | September 11, 2008 | staff

[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.

[1rudeboy]

That's fine, my dear friend. But before we get started, I need to know if I am "lunatic" or "not lunatic." You see, even an open-minded guy such as myself needs a little structure.

Because if I let you get away with BS to start, the rest that follows is BS.

[AndrewC]

You see, even an open-minded guy such as myself needs a little structure.

Fair enough. "Like" does not mean "is". "Presidential" does not mean "president". "Lunacy" does not mean "lunatic".

I do not know if you are a lunatic or not. I did not call you one. I used "lunacy" in the fashion of "foolishness"

[Desron13]

"I don't recall ever having a case involving really large loads where the defendants were armed..."

Where you ever provably caught them armed...

[Ajnin]

It is interesting, however, that you are having such a difficult time establishing my "lunacy." Seriously, what have you accomplished on this thread and in that regard?

What AndrewC has accomplished is that you are unwilling to admit when you are wrong?

[TKDietz]

I didn't catch them. The police did. They pull them over and find the dope. If there are guns they find those too, and you can bet they charge them whenever they find weapons because often the weapons charges are more serious than the underlying drug charges. In my state you can have hundreds of pounds of weed and be facing only a maximum of 30 ears in prison, but have gun too and you are facing life. Whether we are talking federal law or state laws, being in possession of firearms along with large amounts of drugs will increase the possible penalties exponentially.

[TKDietz]

ears = years

Dang it’s been a long couple of days.

[TKDietz]

Let me clarify one other thing. With the thirty year sentence in my state you can parole out in a few years, by “life” I meant life without parole. It's not really worth it to have a gun. People carrying big loads of drugs are generally going to be carrying those big loads for scary organized crime types. Given the amount of dope Aldrete Davila was carrying you can be pretty certain it was owned by one of these Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO’s) you read about in the news today. Cross these people and you die, and quite possibly your family dies too. For “bandits” to steal from these people they have to have brass balls. These are big organizations with people everywhere and they'll be looking for anyone who steals a big load of dope from them. The kind of people that would hijack one of their loads would probably do so armed to the teeth. A lone man driving a truckload of dope carrying only a pistol for protection isn't going to be able to stop them. It's pointless for him to carry a pistol and risk a far worse sentence if he is caught by law enforcement. He wouldn't be able to stop the kind of people that would hijack his load. If somebody like this is going to go armed they are much more likely to have somebody riding shotgun with some serious firepower and/or have a vehicle following them loaded with heavily armed partners in crime. I understand why you would think people like this would always carry guns, but in real life that's not nearly as common as you might think for the reasons I've discussed.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Actual journalists later took the trouble of doing their jobs and bothered to look up some of this dirt bag's acquaintances.

Really? You're depending on a journalist and not testimony under oath? That's funny.

Go figure...

I already did.

[1rudeboy]

Sure. Everyone is wrong except you. The trial judge is wrong, the jury is wrong, Sutton is wrong, three judges of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals are wrong, the list goes on.

Compean is not disgusting, not out-of-shape, not fat, and he didn't get clowned by a wiry little dirtbag. I'll try to think of him as a "noble felon."

[1rudeboy]

I really try to follow the postmodern stuff, I do. If you're into that sort of stuff, I can see how demonstrating someone's lunacy does not make them a lunatic.

Sort of like demonstrating that something with a high temperature is not hot.

[AndrewC]

I can see how demonstrating someone's lunacy does not make them a lunatic.

Sort of like demonstrating that something with a high temperature is not hot.

No. But 273 degreea Kelvin is cold.

[Toddsterpatriot]

No. But 273 degreea Kelvin is cold.

Compared to what?

[AndrewC]

Compared to what?

To something hot, like 100 degree celsius water.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Compared to most of the universe, 273 K is down right toasty.

[jmc813]

This thread sure did get gay quick. All of you people need to get a life.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Science is hard.

[eleni121]

A very sad day for this country. The lunatics have taken over the court system. Sophistry is the game that lawyers and their pals play and justice has become the enemy.

[Bob J]

Your continuing problem is that you take every word of Compeans as the truth, even though the jury ruled he was lying his ass off.

Another BP Agent testified that Compean told him after the shooting that he thought Ramos had hit the guy. This means he not only observed the shooting but saw OAD drop after the shot and thought he was hit.

Please quit posting Compean comments as fact. He lied his way through his testimony, the jury saw it and jailed him for it.

[Bob J]

“Now substitute “country” for “home”, and you will— perhaps— understand my position, even if you continue to disagree with it.”

I understand it. IMO you are playing a semantics game (substituting home for country) to justify your extremist position. It doesn't justify it, just makes you look like you are rationalizing something that is irrational. If it makes you feel better, knock yourself out. But you aren't fooling anyone else.

Now to your assertion that we “must stop the invasion”.

I grew up and live in SoCal, so you don't have to tell me about MS-13. They have always been around and although many years ago it was mainly a home-grown hispanic gang, that there are illegals now joining their ranks does not shock me. But make no mistake, MS-13 have been around for a very long time.

You say we need to stop the invasion. The time for stopping the invasion was 30 years ago. That was when the border states, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, was screaming about “the invasion” then and how it was impacting crime and services.

Guess what the response was from myopic little cretins in their all white enclaves like Grand Rapids? “Screw you”, “it's your problem”, “let the Californicators wallow in their own mess”. We warned this problem would not be contained to the border states but all we heard was laughter, derision and the sound of you all back slapping each other over your short sighted and less than witty comments.

Now 30 years later you're all up in arms because you got day laborers camped out on your street corners in Grand Rapids. Too freaking bad. We could have solved this problem a long time ago but due to the ignorance of knuckle dragging idiots like you it has been allowed to grow and fester into the calamity it is.

The problem is now beyond fixing, and you have only yourself to blame.

Screw you. Hope you have fun with your MS-13 in you neighborhoods because they aren't going away and they will only get more violent. You made your bed, hope you sleep well in it. We've been doing it for 50 years.

[Bob J]

“How many “Constitutional Rights” are you entitled to after wrestling with a law enforcement officer in the course of his sworn duties?”

IMO opinion Compean lied about “going down on one knee” after he slipped trying to butt OAD in the head with his shotgun. He went face down in the ditch (not all the way down) and that is how he got his face dirty and scratched up. He lied about “throwing the shotgun down”, it went several feet into the ditch and he realized it would take too long to retrieve it if he still wanted a chance at catching OAD and not looking like a goof to his fellow agents.

There is no way I could believe that a short, portly weighed down, heavy booted (he was carrying a lot of gear) Compean could chase down and tackle a young, wiry 6 foot tall, sneaker clad OAD. Compean lied about tackling and struggling with OAD to explain the dirt and scratches and also to justify his shoot because he was “assaulted” by OAD.

So you and Andrew can keep taking every word of Compean as the gospel truth, but my opinion is he was a lying, perjuring bad cop trying desperately to justify a bad shoot.

And the jury thought so as well.