http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_5042088



Bush talks pardon for former Border Patrol agents
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 01/19/2007 12:00:00 AM MST


A day after former El Paso Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean started their prison terms for shooting a drug smuggler, President Bush said he would take a "sober look" at the case to see whether he would pardon the men.
Family members of the agents who have been asking for a presidential pardon were galvanized by the president's comment.

"It's wonderful news. We are so heartbroken. Finally, we got a response from the White House," said Joe Loya, Ramos' father-in-law.

President Bush made the comment in Washington, D.C., during a scheduled interview with reporters from Cox Television. Bush said "there's a process for pardons" and the case has to work its way through the system.

"I just want people to take a sober look at the case," he said. "People need to take a tough look at the facts, the evidence a jury looked at, as well as (the) judge. And I will do the same thing."

Ramos and Compean surrendered Wednesday afternoon to begin their 11- and 12-year sentences, respectively. They were convicted of


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violating the civil rights of a drug smuggler they shot in the buttocks in February 2005 near Fabens. They were also convicted of tampering with evidence for not reporting the shooting and because Compean picked up his shell casings.
The length of the sentence was mostly determined because of a mandatory 10-year sentence for crimes involving weapons.

The agent's incarceration Wednesday triggered renewed support for their cause.

Loya said that since Wednesday he has been receiving an e-mail a minute in support of his son-in-law.

"The anger is much greater now for (Assistant U.S. Attorney) Debra Kanof and for (U.S. District Judge Kathleen) Cardone," he said.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, sent a letter to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee asking for a congressional oversight hearing, his spokesman Brian Wash said. Cornyn had declined to take up the cause last year, but Walsh said the senator now felt an opportunity for questioning the officials involved would be welcome, especially on the topic of why the U.S. attorney chose to give the drug smuggler immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony.

U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton said Wednesday in a news release that his office could not have prosecuted the drug smuggler anyway because it had no evidence against him. The smuggler was found months after the shooting, when the case came to light because his mother talked to a friend of hers who was the mother-in-law of a Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

An effort to have a congressional hearing in the case last year failed when the then-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., failed to schedule the promised hearing. Cornyn had not supported that effort.

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., took a different approach to supporting Ramos and Compean. Hunter introduced a bill Thursday calling for a congressional pardon of the agents. Congress has never issued pardons to anyone convicted of a crime, said Joe Kasper, Hunter's spokesman. But Kasper said the congressman believes there's enough ambiguity in the law on pardons to give it a try.

"Agents Compean and Ramos fulfilled their responsibilities as Border Patrol agents and rightfully pursued a suspected and fleeing drug smuggler. It is irresponsible to punish them with jail time," he said in a news release.

White House spokesman Tony Snow seemed to support the agents' conviction, listing details of the case in a briefing with reporters Thursday. He said an officer hit the smuggler, Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, in the chest with a gun after he got out of his car and that "a lot of the allegations about a scuffle and discovering drugs at the scene and all that, they're simply not supported by the fact record of the case."

In a minor local controversy, El Paso lawyers lost their cellular phone privileges inside the federal courthouse after a photograph that appeared to have been taken in the courtroom during the Compean-Ramos trial surfaced on the Web.

Lawyers, unlike other visitors, have been allowed to keep their phones inside the courtroom if they silenced the ring tone. A judge's order was posted Thursday at the federal courtroom suspending the privilege because "the U.S. Marshal has determined that the photograph was taken from the defense table nearest the interpreter's desk," read the order, signed by four federal judges including Judge Cardone,

U.S. Marshals Service officials said they were still investigating, but Mary Stillinger, Ramos' lawyer, said the photo -- showing the case's prosecutors sitting down -- was not taken by a cellular phone during the trial, but rather lifted from a CNN video feed from a news conference at the U.S. attorney's office after the trial.

Stillinger said she believed that the misunderstanding would be cleared soon and that lawyers would again be allowed to keep their cellular phones.

"It's a case of things not being as they seem," she said.

Louie Gilot may be reached at lgilot@elpasotimes.com; 546-6131.