…

Its really interesting….

So in front of Congress, per Patterico, Johnny said:

According to his testimony, last year 35 percent of his 6000 cases were drug offenses. So the answer is about 2000 a year. I don’t know if those are all smugglers.

Now, on Laura Ingraham’s show Johnny says that he had 6,000 cases and about 90-95% of them are drug related. Huh? Which is it Johnny, 30, 90, or 95%?

He also said that the BPAs are just as dangerous as the drug dealers. Of course, he recanted after Laura got upset. But he said!

From HotAir.com:"Contrary to the belief of some, Johnny Sutton is not just out to nail any Border Patrol Agent who fires a gun. Border Patrol Agents in his district frequently engage in shootings, yet prosecutions like this are very rare. Ramos an…

Patterico on July 18, 2007 at 10:13 PM

You believe the BPAs and try the drug smuggler and let the chips fall where they may. But the Mexican Government wouldn’t like that very much would they?

Who is more of a threat to the people of the United States, the drug smuggler or the border agents? I rest my case.

Follow the money. Who wants a Cartel member to get immunity and put away a couple of zealous BRA and send a message to the rest of them to back off?

I’m not sure I can agree with your “you can’t shoot them” argument.

Suicide bombers are not necessarily carrying AKs.

Also, these border-hoppers are illegals and invaders, not US citizens. Constitutional protection does not apply to foreign nationals.

That said, I did post before that the ROE should be permissive of deadly force, but I think an acceptable compromise would be somewhere in between your stance and mine. That way, the border is secure, which is what we both want, right?

Sen. Cornyn (R-TX) and Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) write a letter to President Bush asking him to commute the sentences of imprisoned border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. The text of the letter:

Dear President Bush:

[read it...]

While this case has generated strong emotions on both sides, we do not believe that justice will be served by Agents Ramos and Compean spending over a decade in prison. We urge you to commute their prison sentences immediately.

Sincerely,

Dianne Feinstein
John Cornyn

Links? It would be nice to have all the analysis links we can in this thread.

TheBigOldDog on July 18, 2007 at 2:12 PM

Mark Levin Audio

He makes a quick mention of it on I think 7/9, but he did a long talk and an interview during the height of the outrage about the issue.

Jaibones,

If you cannot disagree without cursing, insulting, and threatening violence against Patterico–a guest blogger whom I invited and welcomed to this site– you will no longer be welcome here.

That goes for anyone else who chooses to employ profanity and threats instead of facts and logic to argue with any of my employees and guest bloggers.

Michelle on July 18, 2007 at 12:52 PM

I agree with you about cussing him out, but I’d hope that you’d excuse him from being a guest blogger. If you want a lawyers opinion of the case, ask Mark Levin to post about it. I think he’d be the better lawyer.

In my mind the Border Patrol was not on trial – Ramos and Compean were

Thanks for replying and no, I do not hate Border Patrol Agents just because I feel that some of them shouldn’t shoot people in the back

I know, I’m a bad man

But Sutton actually has convicted les BP’s than the Houston US attorney who just recently got a sentence of almost 30 years for a BP making a split second decision as well.

Now, tell me the evidence you are going to present to the jury to prove Aldrete-Davila smuggled dope.

Patterico on July 18, 2007 at 10:13 PM

How about the dope that was in the van that you claim several border agents were all converging on, out of which Aldrete-Davila emerged.

But no matter; if Sutton hadn’t decided that he needed to put these two in jail for 11 years, there wouldn’t be a criminal trial at which this drug smuggler’s testimony would be required and for which he would be granted full immunity from prosecution for smuggling the drugs in the first place.

You have it exactly backwards, Patterico. Sutton invented the problems that seem to have you so perplexed.

Now, tell me the evidence you are going to present to the jury to prove Aldrete-Davila smuggled dope.

Specifically through which witnesses would the evidence come?

Patterico on July 18, 2007 at 10:13 PM

Wait, are you trying to say you think there is some credible doubt about whether he was actually a drug smuggler?

OK, do you know anything about this case AT ALL?

You’re not being all too clear there, but I assume you’re ignoring Aldrete’s confession and all the physical evidence, and trying to imply that maybe the jury would have believed Davila’s testimony over that of all the other “criminals” involved?

Well, I guarantee you that if I were the prosecutor, the jury would have had a perfectly fair chance to listen to what you apparently believe to be Aldrete’s iron-clad “defense.”

But Sutton never gave them that chance, did he?

You don’t get to shoot illegal aliens just because they didn’t stop when you told them to.

Patterico on July 18, 2007 at 3:20 PM

Yeah? What about illegal alien drug smugglers?

As for the sanctity of trial by a jury of your peers, what a joy for the citizens of the El Paso area to be tried in front of a jury deeply conflicted over allegiance to the U.S. rule of law vs. the unending barrage of victimhood that our culture spews at them.

I count four of the five “conservative” bloggers who have weighed in on this post siding with a Mexican drug smuggler against two reckless U.S. border control agents. I imagine that this jury must have made the Simpson jury look like 12 copies of Solomon.

The way disputed facts generally get resolved is by trial. There has been one in this case, and that’s what the evidence showed.

My understanding was that the Supervisors got limited immunity to testify against Compean and Ramos. Am I wrong? It is also my understanding that the were told if they didn’t testify they would be prosecuted as well. Am I wrong? It is also my understanding that the jury was not told that supervisors were present at the time of the incident. Am I wrong?

Extracted from http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54103:

The second full paragraph of the DHS memo filed by DHS Special Agent Christopher Sanchez April 12, 2005, states:

Investigation disclosed that the following BP agents were at the location of the shooting incident, assisted in destroying evidence of the shooting, and/or knew/heard about the shooting: Oscar Juarez; Arturo Vasquez; Jose Mendoza; David Jacquez; Lance Medrano; Lorenzo Yrigoyen; Rene Mendez; Robert Arnold; and Jonathan Richards.

Of the nine listed agents, two were supervisors, Arnold and Richards. Arnold was a supervisory Border Patrol agent and Richards was a field operations supervisor, the senior BP officer on the field that day. Three of the agents, Vasquez, Jacquez and Juarez, were given immunity by Sutton’s office. All three were called as witnesses by the prosecution to testify against Ramos and Compean at trial.

In a Jan. 19 exclusive interview with WND, Sutton maintained throwing away the shell casings and not filing reports were central to the reason he decided to prosecute Ramos and Compean.

Is this a lie and I’m misinformed? Please correct me with the Truth.

The sarcasm is not necessary.

Patterico on July 18, 2007 at 4:10 PM

My Goodness, you tell me to put my Outrage Meter to 12, then you tell me to knock off the sarcasm. Was what I said insulting? And of course I understand that he works for the Government and has a team of lawyers. I was wondering if you did when you told me he prosecuted 2000 drug smugglers, which of course HE didn’t. Are you saying he doesn’t prosecute any cases personally and that the BPs were just part of the 6000 case stadard yearly fare? Which ones warrant his personal attention? Which cases does he issue 11 press releases for (http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txw/press_releases/Compean-Ramos/index.html)?

The drug dealer should have received a REDUCED sentence for his testimony, if they had to have his testimony. Not a free pass.

That would have been nice.

But, you play the prosecutor.

Now, tell me the evidence you are going to present to the jury to prove Aldrete-Davila smuggled dope.

Specifically through which witnesses would the evidence come?

Our entire legal system ( NOT a justice system) is sadly,…just terrible, Nifonged you might say. Look at all the prosecutors last year , ON TV, who were SURE Nifong had more evidence. They made fools of themselves yet they still don’t know it. Prosecutors are the most arrogant people I have ever dealt with, and I know about 15-20 of them.
Prosecutors have seemingly lost almost all respect (and have done nothing to earn it back) from ‘the people’ of late.
Plus our courts have increasingly lost credibility the last couple decades.
We don’t trust the drug dealer. We don’t trust the prosecutor. We don’t know who we can trust any more.

Sutton is an arrogant fool for not knowing what this case was from the beginning and it just makes no sense that officers do a decade in prison for ??? what did they do?

Or maybe he did know, and he’s just an open border guy all along.

4) Fifteen shots were fired, Compean fired 14 shots and Ramos 1. The one shot fired by Ramos hit Aldrete-Davila. There were other agents in the area after Aldrete-Davila and also heard the gunfire. Also, both Compean and Ramos gave verbal reports to their supervisor and included that they fired their weapons, which is accepted in their manual.

moonsbreath on July 18, 2007 at 11:38 AM

See that is the problem the sups claimed it didn’t happen, but that was when they were facing criminal charges too. Magically, when they realized that if they said there was no report they’d get off, they said they weren’t given a report.

There has to be a compromise between the ‘Shoot To Kill’ and ‘Run, Rabbit, Run’ blanket policies I see proposed in this thread…. Lethal force should always be on the table…it just shouldn’t be the first recourse for a BP officer responding to an incursion.
James on July 18, 2007 at 4:20 PM

Of course the border isn’t an arbitrary line in the sand. It has to mean SOMETHING. Applying the same standards to a nation’s border as you do to any city street is the same as dissolving the nation.

I think some people are intentionally blurring the issue. They try to portray illegals as all coming across with the intention of giving us free labor – even when we are discussing a case in which that is clearly a lie.

I’m the first to admit that our immigration laws are an unholy mess – and I’m sure there are uncounted exemplary Mexicans I’d like to get over here as soon as possible if those idiots in the State Department and Congress could draft a coherent plan to make that – and only that – happen.

But THIS CASE has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the wholesale slaughter of people who want to mow my lawn for a reasonable wage. And the people who keep trying to paint it that way are knowingly lying.

THIS CASE is about someone crossing our border with an obvious (and undisputed) evil intent. And as far as I’m concerned, the only “crime” involved with this shooting is that Ramos and Compean were stuck trying to do their job with just pistols instead of a mounted machine gun.

Patterico on July 18, 2007 at 3:20 PM

Another prosecutor who has a hard time telling the good guys from the bad guys. What a shame.