Thread: Support grows for jailed border agents Ramos and Compean

Please go to the link and comment support for Ramos and Compean and Request to Delete the Nasty Messages.

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http://www.ocregister.com/news/agents-c ... ring-ramos

Support grows for jailed border agents
House Republicans have written bill seeking pardon for former agents who shot fleeing drug dealer.
By DENA BUNIS
The Orange County Register

WASHINGTON – The two former Border Patrol agents serving more than decade-long sentences in federal prison for shooting a fleeing drug dealer were overcharged for their crimes, Sen. Dianne Feinstein says.

And California's senior senator said she may join the House Republicans who have authored a bill to grant a congressional pardon to the two men. She will also review the law under which they were charged to see if changes should be made.

She spoke after a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee –the first congressional inquiry into the case of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, two former agents convicted of shooting Osvaldo Aldrete Davila as he was trying to get away from them at the Texas-Mexico border.

"I think it's prosecutorial overreaction," Feinstein said. "They threw the book at these officers. Everything they could possibly think of they charged."

Ramos and Compean were convicted last year and began serving their sentences in January. They were found guilty of not only improperly using their firearms, but also of covering up the incident.

Some lawmakers, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, who testified Tuesday morning, have called on President Bush to pardon the two, saying they were just doing their jobs and should be hailed as heroes for trying to stop a drug offense.

"The Ramos and Compean case is the worst miscarriage of justice I have witnessed in the 30 years I've been in Washington," Rohrabacher said. "The decision to give immunity to the drug dealer and throw the book at the Border Patrol agents was a prosecutorial travesty. The whole episode stinks to high heaven."

But Justice Department lawyers and Border Patrol officials said the two agents acted improperly and needed to be prosecuted.

"An honest reading of the facts of this case shows that Compean and Ramos deliberately shot at an unarmed man in the back without justification, destroyed evidence to cover it up and lied about it," U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton testified. "These are serious crimes. A jury heard the facts and voted to convict. Faithfulness to the rule of law required me to bring the case."

But Feinstein and several other senators at the hearing repeatedly pressed Sutton on why he felt it necessary to charge them under a federal statute that Feinstein said was designed to thwart drug deals and that carries with it a 10-year mandatory minimum prison term.

"I really think this is a case of prosecutorial overreaching," Feinstein told Sutton, also reminding him that the agents didn't shoot "some guy" but a "drug dealer.''

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, said the sentences Ramos and Compean got – 11 and 12 years, respectively – were "murder sentences plus." Hunter has authored a bill that would give the two a congressional pardon. The measure has 100 co-sponsors. But legal authorities differ on whether Congress has the power to grant such a pardon, Hunter acknowledged.

After the hearing, Compean's wife, Patty Compean, who attended with other family members and supporters, accused Sutton of making up his own version of the facts in the case. She said she was glad the issue was brought publicly before Congress and that the hearing was worthwhile.

"It started unmasking people," she said. Patty Compean said she is allowed one 15-minute phone call with her husband each month and that she has been to visit him twice in the six months he's been at federal prison in Ohio. Ramos is serving his sentence in a Mississippi prison. Both are appealing their convictions.

At almost every turn during the hearing, government witnesses disagreed with the accounts of the case given by Rohrabacher, Hunter and the lawyer appealing the case for the two men.

The lawmakers testified that both agents believed the drug dealer they were confronting had a gun and because of that reasonable fear for their lives were justified in shooting. Rohrabacher said they were not willfully covering up the incident, but that they committed a "procedural violation" by not reporting what happened, something he said that deserved a reprimand. He also said Davila was shot in the buttocks, not the back.

Luis Barker, the chief patrol agent at the El Paso sector at the time of the incident, said the agents did the wrong thing and that federal officials were right to charge them. Barker said when the agents came forward and told Border Patrol officials what had happened, they never said they saw Davila with a gun. Barker said there have been other cases where agents have used deadly force at the border and that they are rarely charged.

"If those agents, the minute this occurred, said, 'We thought he was armed,' we wouldn't be here today,'' Barker said. He did say he thought the two received "disproportionate" penalties.

Contact the writer: 202-628-6381 or dbunis@ocregister.com

ROM MINUTEWOMAN PENNY, in DC area on business:

July 17, 2007
I am just back from a post-Ramos/Compean meeting

I missed the first 10 or 15 minutes of the hearing in DC, but I made it in time for most of it. (name deleted) invited me to sit with him in the press section, otherwise I might not have gotten in!

It was a pretty positive hearing. I saw Casey Wian, the Loya's, Monica, Compean's wife and family members.

I stayed to shake Feinstein's hand and thank her for presiding over the hearing. She surprised me! All in all, I think it went the agents' ways. That Johnny Sutton is such a liar. Dianne Feinstein got all up in his face a few times! It's too bad they couldn't have kept picking him apart for about 4 hours. He would have crumbled.


Contact Dianne Feinstein and THANK HER!!!
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/
Toll Free Switchboard 866.340.9281

Keep up the great work, Lady, please keep us posted. We want to hear good news on this. The whole country is sick and tired of this dragging on and on, while President Bush takes his sweet time.

We want to see justice prevail NOW!!

i have posted twice on this in rebuttal to somethings that some people on there want to think. i think i have given a couple of people new information also as i saw a couple of posts directed to me that people said they didnt know about what i had written

These two men should NEVER have been sent to prison. I hope the senate goes after Johnny Sutton.

lady said:

It's too bad they couldn't have kept picking him apart for about 4 hours. He would have crumbled.

If he testifies for the House hearing perhaps he will.

Thank you too lady for what you're doing to try and help Ramos and Compean.

I don't think I've ever seen such a miscarriage of justice as to the treatment of these agents. The aggression our government went after them blows my mind and thus I keep thinking something about this isn't out in the open yet.

Let's pray the entire truth comes out but most of all that these men are released soon and can go home to their families.

Monica Ramos said on Rick Roberts show this morning that shes already been told that sutton WILL NOT testify at the house committee hearing

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Originally Posted by jean

I keep thinking something about this isn't out in the open yet.

Jean, don't play naive with me. You know as well as I do that Pres. Bush, DHS Sec. Chertoff, and CBP Chief Aguilar all consider the government of Mexico, speaking through the Mexican Consulate, as their co-equal in the government-to-be of North America. They aren't even acting like Americans any more, only like "North Americans."