Ex-border agents denied hearing
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 09/12/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

El PASO -- Supporters of two imprisoned former Border Patrol agents said they would keep fighting for their freedom even after a request for a new hearing on their case was denied by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The three-judge appeals panel in New Orleans on Wednesday denied a petition for a rehearing for former El Paso agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean. The ruling did not give a reason for the denial.

Ramos and Compean were convicted in 2006 of civil-rights violations after shooting admitted drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete Davila near Fabens in 2005 and then covering it up. In July, the same appeals court upheld mandatory 10-year prison sentences.

"The family is distraught," Ramos' father-in-law, Joe Loya, said by telephone from the Atlanta airport while returning from Washington, D.C., where supporters have been urging President Bush to commute the ex-agents' prison sentences.

"It's just unbelievable. We are up against a stone wall because all these government agencies are connected," Loya said. "We keep on praying and we don't give up hope."

Loya said the push for a prison sentence commutation will also reach out to the presidential campaigns and Congress.

Ramos was sentenced to 11 years, and Compean to 12 years, mainly because of a mandatory minimum 10-year sentence on the federal charge of discharge of a firearm in commission of crime. The law does not exclude law enforcement officers.

The appeals court ruling on Wednesday "validates what this office has said all along -- this prosecution was about the rule of law, plain and simple," U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton said in a written statement. "In America, law-enforcement officers do not get to shoot unarmed suspects who are running away, lie about it and file official reports that are false. That is a crime and prosecutors cannot look the other way."
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