Unable to admit mistakes, former Raza Unida standard-bearer rots in prison

By Scott Stroud / jstroud@express-news.net
Published 11:33 p.m., Thursday, September 1, 2011

Although he has spent the last 17 years in prison and harbors no hope of parole, Ramsey Muñiz still has friends who want to help him.

A barely breathing effort to win freedom for the Raza Unida Party's one-time candidate for governor is a long shot at best. And it definitely won't work as long as Muñiz continues to insist that he was victimized because he was brazen enough to take on the powers that be.

That's a tough sell when you were caught with 88 pounds of cocaine in the trunk of a car and the key tucked in your sock.

But a small group of folks who fought beside him four decades ago, as Mexican Americans struggled for a toehold in state politics, has kept the embers of hope glowing faintly. They're reviewing his trial transcript, taking note of violent criminals who have received more lenient sentences, and hoping that President Barack Obama might commute Muñiz's sentence.

That seems unlikely. Obama in 2008 became the first president elected after admitting that he used cocaine — or “maybe a little blow,â€