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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