Ramos and Compean Released Today
- Thread starter aristotle
- Start date
They should have NEVER Been Charged in the First Place!!!! **** Bleeding heart Liberals were the One's who Pushed that Issue to "Set an Example" They should get their Jobs Back as well as ALL Back Pay and A Very Large Settlement from the Government for this Fiasco!!!! Nuff Said
chefdennis
Veteran Expediter
This whole deal was nothing short of Governmental abuse...These men and their families have had their lives ruined by the government they worked for...think of what our government will do to any of us.............
Obama? Back someone who were doing thier job? Fighting drug dealers? Shoot those are his backers!!! Layoutshooter
letzrockexpress
Veteran Expediter
It's about time...
Yeah, well, Nuff is wrong a lot. You shouldn't listen to Nuff so much.They should have NEVER Been Charged in the First Place!!!! **** Bleeding heart Liberals were the One's who Pushed that Issue to "Set an Example" They should get their Jobs Back as well as ALL Back Pay and A Very Large Settlement from the Government for this Fiasco!!!! Nuff Said
They shot 15 bullets, one of which nailed him in the aѕѕ, at an unarmed man while he was fleeing from them. The officers then picked up their shell casings, put them in their pockets, and failed to file a "shots fired" report, and then lied about the incident when asked. At the time the shots were fired, they had no clue that he was a drug smuggler. None. They were charged with firing on an unarmed man and then covering it up. Those are the facts of the case.
There were no bleeding heart liberals who pushed the issue. The US Attorney's office for the Western District of Texas could not be considered liberal in any way, even by the most rabid conservative, regardless of which litmus test you choose to apply.
Many people view this case as a fiasco perpetuated by the government. Those who believe that have been royally duped. They've had the wool pulled over their eyes. They have been lied to, and because those lies fit within their own agenda and beliefs, they fall for it, hard. They swallowed the hook, line, sinker and a large section of the fishin' pole.
And, quite honestly, it illustrates the danger of getting most or all of your news "facts" from sources with which you agree. The facts of the case are clear, concise and straightforward, and to the prosecuting attorney, fellow Border Control Agents who testified against the men, and West Texas the jury, it was a clear cut case of unlawful use of force.
Almost immediately after the verdict, with the help of reporters and activists promoting and blatantly embellishing the defense's version of the case, the two convicted agents were transformed into martyrs for the battle against illegal immigration. Instead of rogue officers who shot a fleeing, unarmed suspect and then lied about it, they became stand-up cops (nay, true life heroes!) who were OMG forced to shoot an OMG armed drug dealer and then sent to prison by a legal system run amok. OMG!
Within months of the conviction, they had become the center of a dubious political crusade that would energize the furthest reaches of the right, dominate one of CNN's most popular news programs, and persuade a quarter of the U.S. House of Representatives, and one prominent, very liberal Democratic senator, to reject the findings of a federal court.
How did you get duped? How did Ramos and Compean get reinvented as right-wing heroes? The answer lies in the way many Americans get their information, from a fragmented alternative news media that makes it easier than ever to tune out opposing views and inconvenient truths. When people seek "facts" only from sources with which they agree, it's possible for demonstrable and provable untruths to enter the mainstream narrative and remain there, unchallenged. They believe it to be true, no reason to challenge it, therefor it is true.
The ballad of Ramos and Compean is a story that one side (the Right Wing) of America's polarized culture has gotten all wrong, and that much of the other side (the Left Wing), and the rest of the country, for that matter, has never even heard. Until this things got blown out of proportion, the mainstream media didn't bother to report it, because it wasn't newsworthy. It was a simple case of excessive force.
There are five major players in the transformation of Ramos and Compean from cops who tried to cover up a bad shooting into martyred heroes of the great conservative pushback against illegal immigration. The most important of them is Lou Dobbs, the host of CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight." Three other players, journalist Sara A. Carter, activist Andy Ramirez and Border Patrol union official T.J. Bonner, are previously obscure figures who gained instant notoriety and were given great weight as experts once they appeared on Dobbs' show. The fifth is Jerome Corsi, the conservative commentator who coauthored the book, "Unfit for Command," that launched the Swift-boating of John Kerry. Corsi pushed the cause of Ramos and Compean on the Internet while Dobbs was pushing it on TV.
Lou Dobbs, whose show straddles the line between news and advocacy, has nearly doubled his ratings in the past two years by taking a strong stand against illegal immigration. Almost nightly, he includes an opinionated segment on immigration.
Dobbs set the tone for his approach to the Ramos and Compean case with his first segment about the agents. He introduced a short interview with Ramos by saying, "Support is flooding in from all across the country tonight for two Border Patrol agents in Texas who could be sentenced to 20 years in prison for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler. Amazingly, federal prosecutors allowed the smuggler to walk free." Of coourse, the case was not about shooting a drug smuggler, nor did the government let the smuggler walk free, but those are merely inconvenient truths to Dobbs.
The next day, Dobbs ended a second segment on the agents with one of his famous audience polls. The question for viewers was, "Do you believe the Justice Department should be giving immunity to illegal alien drug smugglers in order to prosecute U.S. Border Patrol agents for breaking administrative regulations? ... Yes or no."
Go get 'em Lou.
Activist Andy Ramirez is the chairman of the Friends of the Border Patrol, a California-based Minutemen-like organization. He is also listed by the John Birch Society Speakers' Bureau as a speaker for hire. He is the flip site of the 'Free And Open Border' coin. He became nearly a regular on Dobbs' show, and others, as a spokesman for the families of the guards. Weeks before the original sentencing date, Ramirez finally found a mainsteam media reporter who would listen to his version of the shooting from the defense's point of view.
The mainstream reporter he found was Sara Carter, who then worked for the prestigious and illustrious Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (note the sarcasm), the fringe suburban Los Angeles newspaper based out of Ontario, CA. Carter had written several sympathetic stories about activists like the Minutemen and had begun quoting Ramirez on border issues in February 2005. Carter published a 2600 word article (which has since been removed from the Daily Bulletin's archives), headlined "Convicted Border Agent Tells His Story," largely based on an interview with Ignacio Ramos. It is an uncritical, breathless rehearsal of the defense's claims. It includes two important and exculpatory assertions that conflict with the testimony of other witnesses at trial.
In the third sentence of her article, Carter writes, "Ramos' fellow agent, Jose Alonso Compean, was lying on the ground behind him, banged up and bloody from a scuffle with the much-bigger smuggler moments earlier. Suddenly the smuggler turned toward the pursuing Ramos, gun in hand." Turns out, that's a lie. It's even different than Compean's own testimony. The suspect had no gun, nor did they every think he did, and Compean was on the ground and bloody because he fell down when trying to tackle the suspect. But people read it, and they believed it, because it was printed in the paper.
Days later, Carter appeared on the O'Reilly Factor. The next day Dobbs did a piece on it, and the day after that she appeared on his show. After that, he continued to present Carter's version of the story, regardless of the evidence presented and sworn to in court.
Another thing in Carter's story that is noteworthy is one of the "facts" that people love to grab onto, and is one that gets reported often. She described Ramos as "a former nominee for Border Patrol Agent of the Year." That contention, which quickly became a talking point for backers of Ramos and Compean, and is constantly used to invoke outrage at the injustice of it all, is technically correct, but blatantly disingenuous. A pre-sentencing investigation by the government showed that Ramos was nominated by a fellow officer at the Fabens Border Patrol Station after his arrest for the shooting.
Sara Carter, who much like Ted Baxter waiting for The Network to call, now works for the Washington Times, and continues to champion the cause of the border guard, albeit with a little more oversight from her editors, among other important issues of the day. Way to go, Ted.
But other than Dobbs, no one has gotten the screen time of T.J. Bonner, the the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents Border Patrol agents. Bonner, who was quoted in Carter's initial article and in numerous other print accounts, has appeared or been quoted on Dobbs' show countless times.
Bonner and the NBPC have helped circulate the now-widespread claim that Aldrete-Davila, the victim of the shooting, was indicted for drug smuggling and that his indictment was subsequently tossed out in exchange for testimony friendly to the prosecution. That's a blatant lie. He and other supporters of the agents have also used the rumor of a "sealed indictment", and then its expungement, to help convince the Right that the prosecution of the agents was illegitimate. In a written statement, Bonner and the NBPC states, "In October of 2005, Aldrete-Davila was indicted for smuggling about 1,000 pounds of marijuana. The sealed indictment was subsequently expunged." That's also a lie.
There is no law that allows, nor is there even a procedure for, the expungement of a federal indictment. Whoops.
When that tiny little fact was pointed out to Bonner, he went on Dobbs' show and said, "It's probable but not provable [that it happened]. A lot of stuff has disappeared or been covered up." He heard about the indictment and expungement from confidential sources he can't disclose. Yeah, right. Even Dobbs showed a little disappointment at his newfound golden boy cash cow at that point.
In order to cover his aѕѕ, Bonner then made widespread claims that the fellow officers and Border Patrol supervisors lied on the stand, and that the US Attorney's Office suborned their perjury. Not only that, he took it one step further, claiming that investigators had tricked the agents into providing false statements, then used a threat of prosecution to force them to support the government's theory of the case.
When asked if he had any evidence for this, Bonner said he did not. "It's just the way they work."
Lou Dobbs garners nearly a million viewers a night, and he and guests like Bonner have been primarily responsible for the right's reshaping of the Ramos and Compean story. The case, however, has also been a focus of right-wing obsession on the Internet. Reporter Jerome Corsi has been instrumental in advancing the narrative on the Web. A reporter for WorldNetDaily, Corsi is best-known for his role in the Swift-boat movement. His latest book is The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada, a long conspiracy theory in which he claims to expose secret plans for a "North American Union" that would combine the three countries into one.
The man's job is to sell books.
Corsi's most important contribution to the reworked conservative version of the Ramos and Compean case is to attempt to absolve the agents of a coverup. But the two agents absolutely covered up the incident, and admitted to doing so. Compean hid some of the shell casings and asked a third agent returning to the scene later that day to dispose of the rest. Neither Ramos nor Compean ever reported the shooting. They were arrested a month later, and then only because America's border with Mexico is like a very long and skinny small town. Aldrete-Davila's mother is friends with the mother-in-law of Rene Sanchez, a Border Patrol agent in Arizona. After hearing about the incident from his mother-in-law, Sanchez sent a report to the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, which then dispatched a special agent to Texas to investigate.
The reality is, the incident was only discovered, and the agents prosecuted, because one Border Patrol Agent, hundreds of miles away in Arizona, heard about it through his mother-in-law, because of a phone call between two middle-aged women who had grown up together in a village in Mexico. In Corsi's version, however, Ramos and Compean's supervisors knew about the shooting as soon as it happened, and were in fact present at the time it happened.
People who believe these two officers are unjustly persecuted heroes have been duped. Duped into believing a revised version of current events that were revised as they were happening. And they were not revised by the mainstream press, but by the oh, so exalted undercover alternative news media, which also has their own agenda. It is a testament to the notion that if you look hard enough, or look in the right place, you will find the facts to support what you believe, regardless of whether or not they are true.
letzrockexpress
Veteran Expediter
There are three sides to every story...Yours, mine, and the truth. I know that what Mr. Campeon and Mr. Ramos did, albeit in the heat of the moment, was probably not by the book and likely illegal. I'm not an advocate for breaking any laws. My opinion on this issue is based on the fact that desperate times call for desperate measures. The guy who was shot is and was a known scumbag drug smuggler. I don't want to sound like a vigilante' as I do not believe in vigilanteism, but sometimes the line between right and wrong gets blurred in the course of trying to do the "right" thing. I can't stand in judgement of either of these men because I have not walked in their shoes. This border patrol business is dangerous stuff! If I think with my heart,I feel this guy should be dead. If I think with my head, He should not have, under the circumstances portrayed in the trial, been shot at.
The fact is, life never happens in slow motion, especially when a crime is being committed. Split second decisions are made that can, and often do, have long lasting effects. These guys were hired to protect our nation's border. My gut tells me they believed they were doing so. The line got blurred. The guy got shot. Did Ramos and Campeon act inappropriately? Probably. They did do time for their actions.
The scumbag is still walking around. Is this justice? I am wrestling with this as I am posting this minute. Should bad behavior be rewarded? NO. Do we need to try to keep scumbag drug smugglers out of our country? YES. It's a vicious circle. I for one am just glad that these two former border guards are finally out of jail.
The fact is, life never happens in slow motion, especially when a crime is being committed. Split second decisions are made that can, and often do, have long lasting effects. These guys were hired to protect our nation's border. My gut tells me they believed they were doing so. The line got blurred. The guy got shot. Did Ramos and Campeon act inappropriately? Probably. They did do time for their actions.
The scumbag is still walking around. Is this justice? I am wrestling with this as I am posting this minute. Should bad behavior be rewarded? NO. Do we need to try to keep scumbag drug smugglers out of our country? YES. It's a vicious circle. I for one am just glad that these two former border guards are finally out of jail.
Turtle... I made no attempt to exonerate Ramos and Compean. I don't really know what happened there. The "facts" are elusive and confusing. More than one version of events have been put forth. I don't lend more credence to the prosecution because I don't trust their motives.
My natural instincts are to be sympathetic towards the Border Agents. Not the shooting victim. He's no Boy Scout and neither are the Border Agents. Nonetheless, I like the agents. It's a human bias. Sometimes, we root for the "bad guys."
I submit we are not all dupes for being skeptical of the "official" account. Facts are really hard to establish as being irrefutable. I just don't know what truly happened. I admire your indefatigable pursuit of the truth.
My natural instincts are to be sympathetic towards the Border Agents. Not the shooting victim. He's no Boy Scout and neither are the Border Agents. Nonetheless, I like the agents. It's a human bias. Sometimes, we root for the "bad guys."
I submit we are not all dupes for being skeptical of the "official" account. Facts are really hard to establish as being irrefutable. I just don't know what truly happened. I admire your indefatigable pursuit of the truth.
Last edited:
Why is it that they are even in a position to have this happen? Why have we not closed the border? Why to we tolerate or even encourage illegal immigration? How many times could these guys been shot at before? How many innocent local residents have had property damaged? Been attacked or killed? Nothing is as easy as an "official report" or a "right wing" reaction. These kinds of things will continue to happen until the Federal Government does it's REAL job and closes our borders. The defense of the Nation is thier Primary job. I don't have to believe an official report or talk radio to understand that many good people are being put into impossible situations because polititions are more interested in votes than working at the job they swore to do. Put the blame on the real criminals, our elected officials. Layoutshooter
This whole thing quickly became a political football, largely due to the polar opposites on some of the issues, the main one being illegal immigration. Those who are vehemently against illegals took one side, and basically skewed the facts to support their cause, the mainstream media didn't latch onto it because it wasn't newsorthy, so the only part of the story that most people heard was the revised version. It's that simple. The facts are not a matter of the "official" account, nor are they elusive and confusing. The officers themselves admitted to the facts as presented by the prosecution, and did so in recorded interviews by in-house Border Patrol investigators. One said flatly that he didn't want to report the incident because he didn't want to get into trouble. When this became a nationally known issue, and it began to be spun in a certain way, the officers changed their story, at least in the press. But it was already too late, since they had already offered up testimony to the facts of what they did and why they did it.
"My opinion on this issue is based on the fact that desperate times call for desperate measures."
The times weren't desperate, and no desperate measures were required. A suspicious van was stopped, and the driver fled. A typical scenario along the border, like many others. It was so much like so many others that one office figured the man would try to escape back across the border, so he cut him off at the pass, so to speak, and waited for him at a crest, and that's when there was a scuffle in Compean trying to tackle him, and that's when Compean fell down. Ramos came upon Compean, saw that Aldrete-Davila was escaping, and started shooting. It was later, after Aldrete-Davila has scurried into the brush and then into a waiting van, than he noticed Compean was bloody.
"The guy who was shot is and was a known scumbag drug smuggler."
Yeah, but neither Ramos nor Compean knew that at the time. Didn't have a clue. All they knew is that he was a probable illegal and was fleeing. The fact that he turned out to be a known scumbag drug smuggler, nor the fact that the van he was driving contained 800 pounds of marijuana at the time they pulled him over, does not justify the ends of their means. It was excessive forced based on everything they knew at the time, and they both fully admitted as much.
The big question left unanswered is how two well trained Border Guards could miss a guy at relatively close range 14 times. At 15 shots, at least half of them should have been center mass, middle of his back.
But I likewise have no sympathy for Ramos or Compean. None. They knew what they law said, and they violated it in gross fashion. They knew they violated it, then tried to cover it up to keep from getting into trouble, thinking that since the man had already crossed back into Mexico, they were hoping that no one would find out.
"Why is it that they are even in a position to have this happen? Why have we not closed the border? Why to we tolerate or even encourage illegal immigration?"
I agree completely. I should state quite plainly that I have no sympathy for Aldrete-Davila. None. I believe that if the US Government is actually serious about getting a handle on illegal immigration, then someone trying to cross the border illegally, or willfully fleeing a CBP Officer after having been stopped, should be shot on sight. That will bring illegal immigration to a swift halt, or at least put a serious dent in it. Once you get control of the border, then you can deal with the other problems, and if you pick off a few illegals trying to sneak in, that will certainly go a long way towards controlling the border.
Again, they weren't put into an impossible situation that night. These guys were well trained and nothing came up that they had not been trained for. It was a typical night, right up until the first shot was fired at a fleeing, unarmed man.
"My opinion on this issue is based on the fact that desperate times call for desperate measures."
The times weren't desperate, and no desperate measures were required. A suspicious van was stopped, and the driver fled. A typical scenario along the border, like many others. It was so much like so many others that one office figured the man would try to escape back across the border, so he cut him off at the pass, so to speak, and waited for him at a crest, and that's when there was a scuffle in Compean trying to tackle him, and that's when Compean fell down. Ramos came upon Compean, saw that Aldrete-Davila was escaping, and started shooting. It was later, after Aldrete-Davila has scurried into the brush and then into a waiting van, than he noticed Compean was bloody.
"The guy who was shot is and was a known scumbag drug smuggler."
Yeah, but neither Ramos nor Compean knew that at the time. Didn't have a clue. All they knew is that he was a probable illegal and was fleeing. The fact that he turned out to be a known scumbag drug smuggler, nor the fact that the van he was driving contained 800 pounds of marijuana at the time they pulled him over, does not justify the ends of their means. It was excessive forced based on everything they knew at the time, and they both fully admitted as much.
The big question left unanswered is how two well trained Border Guards could miss a guy at relatively close range 14 times. At 15 shots, at least half of them should have been center mass, middle of his back.
But I likewise have no sympathy for Ramos or Compean. None. They knew what they law said, and they violated it in gross fashion. They knew they violated it, then tried to cover it up to keep from getting into trouble, thinking that since the man had already crossed back into Mexico, they were hoping that no one would find out.
"Why is it that they are even in a position to have this happen? Why have we not closed the border? Why to we tolerate or even encourage illegal immigration?"
I agree completely. I should state quite plainly that I have no sympathy for Aldrete-Davila. None. I believe that if the US Government is actually serious about getting a handle on illegal immigration, then someone trying to cross the border illegally, or willfully fleeing a CBP Officer after having been stopped, should be shot on sight. That will bring illegal immigration to a swift halt, or at least put a serious dent in it. Once you get control of the border, then you can deal with the other problems, and if you pick off a few illegals trying to sneak in, that will certainly go a long way towards controlling the border.
Again, they weren't put into an impossible situation that night. These guys were well trained and nothing came up that they had not been trained for. It was a typical night, right up until the first shot was fired at a fleeing, unarmed man.
MAYBE that night was normal, maybe not, I don't really believe the official or un-official versions. I don't know what might have happened an hour before. Even if it was that way, how many drug dealers and illegals have these guys caught and then had them released? Much like my son and nephew when they were in Iraq. They would catch a known "Bad Guy" just to have them released on the word of this congressman or that senator or general. I still say we ask to much of these guys and do not back them in any way. I don't know how they missed that many times, maybe they had cheap government ammo. My self my main weapon would be a 12ga with #4 buck shot 3 1/2in to maximize the # of pellets I slung at the scum. I don't know Turtle, maybe those two guys just finally got fed up with all the "stuff" they had to deal with. It would be a very human reaction. No right or legal, but I can understand how it could happen. Layoutshooter
Here's a lengthy but pretty objective article written by Alex Koppleman in 2007 that details the entire saga of Ramos and Compean:
The case of Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila and Agents Ramos and Compean of the U.S. Border Patrol | Salon News
A couple of quotes from the article are significant (bold emphasis mine):
"... At trial, government prosecutors presented a case, supported by eyewitness testimony, that alleged the following: On Feb. 17, 2005, Aldrete-Davila led Border Patrol agents on a high-speed car chase that ended at a ditch about 120 yards from Mexico. Aldrete-Davila abandoned a van with 743 pounds of marijuana inside and made a dash for the border. Compean, on foot, intercepted Aldrete-Davila, who put his hands in the air to surrender.
At that point, according to trial testimony, Compean tried to hit Aldrete-Davila with the butt of his shotgun, missed, and fell into the 11-foot-deep ditch. Aldrete-Davila took off running. Compean climbed out of the ditch, shot at him 14 times and missed. Ramos, who had watched Compean fall, then fired once. The bullet entered Aldrete-Davila's left buttock, severed his urethra and came to rest in his right thigh. He fell down, but got back up, escaping across the Rio Grande into Mexico. The two agents then covered up the incident. Compean hid some of the shell casings and asked a third agent returning to the scene later that day to dispose of the rest. Neither Ramos nor Compean ever reported the shooting. They were arrested a month later, and then only because America's border with Mexico is like a very long and skinny small town. Aldrete-Davila's mother is friends with the mother-in-law of Rene Sanchez, a Border Patrol agent in Arizona. After hearing about the incident from his mother-in-law, Sanchez sent a report to the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, which then dispatched a special agent to Texas to investigate..."
..."Before he was shot by Ramos on Feb. 17, 2005, Aldrete-Davila had been driving a van full of marijuana. At the agents' trial the defense had tried to question Aldrete-Davila about an alleged second drug-smuggling trip in October 2005, during which he allegedly brought another load of marijuana into the United States. The defense was barred from asking Aldrete-Davila or any other witness about this supposed second load, but after the agents were convicted, their backers began to see a connection between the alleged second load and the credibility of Aldrete-Davila's testimony. They suspected that the U.S. attorneys' office had cut a deal with Aldrete-Davila in exchange for his testimony, a deal that included overlooking the second drug run as well as the first.
The story of a second load may be credible. A defendant who this month pleaded guilty to distribution of marijuana in federal court told the DEA that Aldrete-Davila had delivered the load in question to his house in Texas. According to U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, the investigation into Aldrete-Davila's involvement is ongoing, and no charges have been filed..."
Aldrete-Davila was a drug runner and they knew it. However, Ramos and Compean mishandled the situation and they knew that also and tried to cover it up. Granted, they should have been tried - but IMHO the sentence was excessive and deserved to be commuted. Bush got it right.
After the above article was written Aldrete-Davila wound up getting sentenced to two consecutive 57-month terms for drug smuggling, ironically by the same judge that sentenced Ramos and Compean. Now I'm waiting for the left-wingers to mount a protest for Obama to commute or pardon him.
CNSNews.com - Drug Smuggler Gets Less Prison Time Than Border Agents
The case of Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila and Agents Ramos and Compean of the U.S. Border Patrol | Salon News
A couple of quotes from the article are significant (bold emphasis mine):
"... At trial, government prosecutors presented a case, supported by eyewitness testimony, that alleged the following: On Feb. 17, 2005, Aldrete-Davila led Border Patrol agents on a high-speed car chase that ended at a ditch about 120 yards from Mexico. Aldrete-Davila abandoned a van with 743 pounds of marijuana inside and made a dash for the border. Compean, on foot, intercepted Aldrete-Davila, who put his hands in the air to surrender.
At that point, according to trial testimony, Compean tried to hit Aldrete-Davila with the butt of his shotgun, missed, and fell into the 11-foot-deep ditch. Aldrete-Davila took off running. Compean climbed out of the ditch, shot at him 14 times and missed. Ramos, who had watched Compean fall, then fired once. The bullet entered Aldrete-Davila's left buttock, severed his urethra and came to rest in his right thigh. He fell down, but got back up, escaping across the Rio Grande into Mexico. The two agents then covered up the incident. Compean hid some of the shell casings and asked a third agent returning to the scene later that day to dispose of the rest. Neither Ramos nor Compean ever reported the shooting. They were arrested a month later, and then only because America's border with Mexico is like a very long and skinny small town. Aldrete-Davila's mother is friends with the mother-in-law of Rene Sanchez, a Border Patrol agent in Arizona. After hearing about the incident from his mother-in-law, Sanchez sent a report to the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, which then dispatched a special agent to Texas to investigate..."
..."Before he was shot by Ramos on Feb. 17, 2005, Aldrete-Davila had been driving a van full of marijuana. At the agents' trial the defense had tried to question Aldrete-Davila about an alleged second drug-smuggling trip in October 2005, during which he allegedly brought another load of marijuana into the United States. The defense was barred from asking Aldrete-Davila or any other witness about this supposed second load, but after the agents were convicted, their backers began to see a connection between the alleged second load and the credibility of Aldrete-Davila's testimony. They suspected that the U.S. attorneys' office had cut a deal with Aldrete-Davila in exchange for his testimony, a deal that included overlooking the second drug run as well as the first.
The story of a second load may be credible. A defendant who this month pleaded guilty to distribution of marijuana in federal court told the DEA that Aldrete-Davila had delivered the load in question to his house in Texas. According to U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, the investigation into Aldrete-Davila's involvement is ongoing, and no charges have been filed..."
Aldrete-Davila was a drug runner and they knew it. However, Ramos and Compean mishandled the situation and they knew that also and tried to cover it up. Granted, they should have been tried - but IMHO the sentence was excessive and deserved to be commuted. Bush got it right.
After the above article was written Aldrete-Davila wound up getting sentenced to two consecutive 57-month terms for drug smuggling, ironically by the same judge that sentenced Ramos and Compean. Now I'm waiting for the left-wingers to mount a protest for Obama to commute or pardon him.
CNSNews.com - Drug Smuggler Gets Less Prison Time Than Border Agents
Turtle... have you considered prosecutor Johnny Sutton just might be an overzealous, politically ambitious man who is trying to make a name for himself as he seeks higher office? Happens all the time.
One irrefutable fact is clear: Ramos and Compean are terrible marksmen. Sheesh.
This case is anything but over. Legal action will probably go on for years. I have noticed your love of irony. The ultimate irony may be the criminal and civil prosecution of Johnny Sutton. Prosecutorial misconduct and malicious prosecution come to mind. Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX) has promised an investigation. Congressman Poe is a highly respected former prosecutor and judge. Poe v. Sutton will be interesting.
If we are to believe the courts gave Ramos and Compean a fair shake, then Mr. Sutton will get a fair shake, too, right?
One irrefutable fact is clear: Ramos and Compean are terrible marksmen. Sheesh.
This case is anything but over. Legal action will probably go on for years. I have noticed your love of irony. The ultimate irony may be the criminal and civil prosecution of Johnny Sutton. Prosecutorial misconduct and malicious prosecution come to mind. Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX) has promised an investigation. Congressman Poe is a highly respected former prosecutor and judge. Poe v. Sutton will be interesting.
If we are to believe the courts gave Ramos and Compean a fair shake, then Mr. Sutton will get a fair shake, too, right?
Moreover, I am left to wonder why George W. commuted these sentences? He was fanatical in his insistence that the border agents be prosecuted. Could it be because Bush is retiring to Crawford,Tx and now has to live among the offended?
If Johnny Sutton is brought to trial, I wonder if an impartial jury can be found? Where do you think popular sentiment hangs its hat? Is there even such a thing as an impartial jury? A jury is made up of human beings, after all. Most humans will admit to some bias. The remainder, well...
In some way, I have an intuition that Bush's friendship with Vincente Fox propelled this whole sordid business. Left alone at the local level, it amounted to very little.
If Johnny Sutton is brought to trial, I wonder if an impartial jury can be found? Where do you think popular sentiment hangs its hat? Is there even such a thing as an impartial jury? A jury is made up of human beings, after all. Most humans will admit to some bias. The remainder, well...
In some way, I have an intuition that Bush's friendship with Vincente Fox propelled this whole sordid business. Left alone at the local level, it amounted to very little.
chefdennis
Veteran Expediter
I don't believe anyone that posted here ever said that the 2 border guards were illegally prosecuted, they were simply OVER prosecuted by a over zealous prosecutor , who ended up helping the criminal on more then one occassion and who is also a very good friend and polictical allie of Bushs, who Bush stood by till the end and still does...
should they have been punished yes, but not to this extent.
and yes they need to spend more time at the range also...
should they have been punished yes, but not to this extent.
and yes they need to spend more time at the range also...
Absolutely. He probably was a little over zealous. On the other hand, he has to work with border guards on a regular basis, and not many prosecutors will bend over backwards to nail a cop unless there's good reason, especially as in this case where it was still a quiet little local story when charges were filed. As soon at is all hit the fan and went national (relatively speaking), reason goes out the window and so does plea bargains and everything else - the objective is to win the game. The laundry list of charges stood firm, no wiggle room to bargain at that point. They were so adamant about winning, as so often is the case, that truth and justice is secondary. That's why Aldrete-Davila was given immunity. There was really and truly no reason to give him any kind of break at all, much less immunity for testimony. The trial could have taken place without Aldrete-Davila being present at all, actually.
lol yeah.
The biggest problem is they really didn't know the van was loaded down with pot when they fired on him. If they had been better shots and killed him, and then lucked out and found the pot, this all would have ended right then and there.
If Congressman Poe does any investigation, it will likely come up dry. Malicious prosecution won't happen, because the officers admitted to everything they did, and there was no misconduct on the part of the prosecutor. Cutting a deal with Aldrete-Davila to keep the first drug run out of the trial was a non-deal deal, as it had no bearing on the case and almost certainly wouldn't have been admissible, anyway. Aldrete-Davila was never arrested for the previous drug run, so that the drug run even happened at all is just an allegation. Even if the allegation were true (which it was) it still didn't have any bearing on what happened the night of the shooting, because neither Ramos or Compean knew of the previous drug run. And they didn't know his van was loaded with pot that night until after he had fled into Mexico.
Granted, gut feeling or instinct or whatever, Ramos and Compean knew they guy was dirty. Most Border Guards are pretty good at that kind of thing. They don't miss much. That's whey they tried to stop him. But that's all it was, a gut feeling, they really didn't know anything specific.
Well, I don't know that I'd use the word fanatical to describe his feelings in this case. It's not very often that a president will get involved in a case, even a federal case like this, until after the verdict. As for living of Crawford and being among the offended, well, Crawford isn't exactly a suburb of El Paso. But I see your point.
I do think it's odd that he commuted the sentences instead of giving them an outright pardon. But then again, they screwed up, tried to hide it, then lied about it. The fact that it happened with an illegal alien drug smuggler really isn't the issue.
That's what peaked my interest in this case when I first started reading about it. The mainstream press had nothing on this. Zero. And of course, it's always a case of the mainstream media feeding you what they want, and if you want the real truth, the genuine article, you have to go to the alternative media, which, of course, is mainly Blogs, which is a term for Web Log, which is a term for a journal of opinion posted to the Web. So you have to be very careful about what the real truth actually is. In this case, all of the information was coming from conservative sources and was being used to champion the illegal immigration cause and agenda. OK, fine. It sure looks like it's ripe for that kind of thing.
I started reading, and it was all very well presented as factual with facts and everything. Two border guards stopped an illegal alien drug smuggler and then shot him while he was trying to escape, and now the government is not only prosecuting the two border guards for crimes against the illegal alien drug smuggler, they let the drug smuggler go scott free in exchange for testimony against the border guards. That's exactly how it was presented, and I swear to God that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It's flat out absurd.
If that were true, there is no way the Bush administration, or anyone else, including even Obama, could keep such a tight lid on the mainstream press. Not a chance. But the mainsteam press didn't have a word on it, other than the original local stories in El Paso. So I looked into why, and kept up with things as it all went along. I even read the transcripts of the trial. It's a simple case of excessive force that has been revised, rewritten and blown out of proportion for a political purpose. But for many, the lie and the Barnum Big Top conspiracy fits an agenda, it fills a need, so let's go with that. No point in letting little inconveniences like actual truth get in the way. They don't fit the agenda.
I thought we were. I don't see anyone yelling this time. I don't think I was ranting or raving on this one. I was saving it for another one. LOL Layoutshooter
No, no.... I wasn't disagreeing with you, Layout. We are in close alignment philosophically on this case. I was having fun with our pugilistic penpal, Turtle. He makes me think, but I remain unconvinced.
Turtle is ok, he is just a bit mis-guided. LOL There is still hope for him. Just joshin Turtle. Layoutshooter