Thread: Free Gilmer: DEPUTY GILMER HERNANDEZ

For your review and analysis....

News Update: Texas Congressman Ted Poe addresses the House on January 10th with the following speech:

DEPUTY GILMER HERNANDEZ--BORDER LAWMAN
Mr. Speaker, in the small border town of Rocksprings, Texas,
where drug smugglers and human smugglers sneak across the Rio Grande

into America, lone Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez was on patrol. In
the stillness of the vast night, a speeding Suburban runs a red light.
Deputy Hernandez, 25, stops the vehicle, but suddenly, without warning,
the vehicle takes off. Deputy Hernandez says the vehicle tried to run
him down. The lawman fires several shots, one of which shoots out the
rear tire, just like in the movies.

The vehicle stops, and eight or nine illegals jump out and take off
running into the sagebrush. One illegal had a minor injury from a
bullet. The U.S. Government rounds up six or seven of the illegals and,
guess what, prosecutes Deputy Hernandez, claiming he recklessly
discharged his firearm and uses the illegals as witnesses against the
lawman during a trial.

Read More at

http://www.freegilmer.com/

Yeah, this is starting to look like a pattern.

Is this the same prosecution in which one of the illegals tried to hit the officer with a rock?

no this is johnny sutton's west texas US Attorney office again

the one with the rock happened in Arizona, and thank god wont be handled by sutton, or else that agent, will be in prison too

Originally Posted by CrocketsGhost

Yeah, this is starting to look like a pattern.

Is this the same prosecution in which one of the illegals tried to hit the officer with a rock?

I may be mistaken here, I think the illegal who threatened the border guard with a rock was taken serious by the border guard and shot and killed for his threat of landing a rock up side of the guards head, now we have another border guard who will be fighting for his life in a court of law, his word against the word of 7 illegals, and just who's word do you think the prosecution and the jury will choose to accept? It seems that Rames and Compean are about to have some more company in prison! Yes, I think there is beginning to be a pattern here. Pretty soon at this rate, we will have no more border guards left to guard the border,I guess we can hire illegals to do their jobs for them maybe?

Let me get this straight, you hire a man or woman to protect us and/or our borders, you train them, give them weapons, tell them to capture criminals, give them the right to make judgement calls on how to handle potentially dangerous situations, then.....when they do what they have been trained for, do what is within their jurisdiction, then Federal Prosecutors come in and try them as criminals?

Wait a minute, am I on some kind of hidden camera show? Cause really, this is beyond the twilight zone in surrealness!

We need to get this prosecutor out like they did with Nifong. My lord what kind of madness is this man going to go to?

What can we do here to stop this dictator...I mean prosecutor?

Sutton's office needs to be investigated by an outside auditor. Something is going on there. Any agent who is involved with illegals goes to jail. How can someone who is suppose to protect Americans and enforce the law, do nothing but put agents chasing illegals in jail.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.a ... E_ID=54042

Texas town is running 'Free Gilmer' campaign
Deputy accused of shooting at fleeing illegals now is scheduled for sentencing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: February 1, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern



© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com


A Texas town has launched a "Free Gilmer" campaign on behalf of Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez, who has been convicted of firing a weapon at fleeing illegals, and is scheduled for sentencing in March.


Townspeople rally for Gilmer Hernandez


Congressman Ted Poe brought the issue to the attention of Congress recently, where he outlined the circumstances under which Hernandez fired several shots, including one that left one illegal alien with a minor injury.


"Mr. Speaker, in the small border town of Rocksprings, Texas, where drug smugglers and human smugglers sneak across the Rio Grande into America, lone Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez was on patrol. In the stillness of the vast night, a speeding Suburban runs a red light. Deputy Hernandez, 25, stops the vehicle, but suddenly, without warning, the vehicle takes off.
"Deputy Hernandez says the vehicle tried to run him down. The lawman fires several shots, one of which shoots out the rear tire, just like in the movies. The vehicle stops, and eight or nine illegals jump out and take off running into the sagebrush," he said.

The U.S. government then rounds up the illegals and, "Guess what, prosecutes Deputy Hernandez, claiming he recklessly discharged his firearm and uses the illegals as witnesses against the lawman during a trial," he said.

"Mr. Speaker, another example of how the Federal Government is more concerned about people illegally invading American than it is about the men who protect America," he said.

The case is starkly like the case involving two former U.S. Border Patrol Agents, Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos, who were convicted of shooting at a fleeing drug smuggler who escaped back into Mexico. They currently are serving prison terms of 11 and 12 years.

And yet another case that is similar involves David Sipe, another former Border Patrol agent whose 2001 guilty verdict in a civil rights case now has been overturned. He was in physical combat and fearing for his life when he subdued the smuggler by hitting him with his flashlight, according to reports of the case.

The subsequent stitches in the smuggler's head resulted in criminal charges against the law enforcement officer, and an $80,000 government settlement for the criminal.

In Hernandez' situation, according to news reports, a group of local Baptists is paying Hernandez' mortgage and others are covering his truck payments and utilities, and "Free Gilmer" signs have sprouted all over.

"I think the overwhelming majority of the community just can't believe it. Of all people! If he were some raunchy deputy, but he's not. He's very well respected," said Carolyn Anderson, editor of the local Texas Mohair Weekly. "It's both compassion and outrage. They want him released and pardoned."

His conviction came Dec. 1 after a week-long trial in federal court in Del Rio. He was convicted of violating the civil rights of a Mexican woman who suffered a minor gunshot wound while being smuggled to Austin.

Hernandez has been held without bond in the Val Verde Correction Facility in Del Rio since, and is scheduled for sentencing in March, when he could get up to 10 years in a federal prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Baumann said the law is that "you cannot use deadly force to stop a car unless it poses an imminent threat to the officer or another person."

But Hernandez's lawyer, Jimmy Parks Jr., described the shooting as justified.

"Everything Gilmer did was appropriate and what he had been instructed to do, and … he had come into a situation in which he truly was in fear for his life," Parks said.

"These people were in the country illegally. They were fleeing the law. What is law enforcement supposed to do?" asked Albert Green, a local Baptist pastor.

The confrontation was April 14, 2005, and Hernandez reported he began shooting after the driver tried to run him over.

The guilty verdict came on a grand jury indictment that he shot Maricela Rodriguez-Garcia with a dangerous weapon causing bodily injury. She was treated and released from a hospital that night.

In the Sipe case, according to reports, he testified he was being struck in the side and the assailant "was very close to my weapon … and I had to do what I could to control the situation as fast as I could."

But it took a second jury to reach that result. After the first jury, which returned a guilty verdict, he could only sit and suffer. "My house foreclosed on after having to file bankruptcy, my children having to live through this... of course my wife divorcing me."

The new result came after it was discovered that prosecutors had withheld information from the defense about prior convictions for some of the witnesses.

In the Ramos and Compean case, WND has reported that Homeland Security documents apparently contradict the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case.

The internal Department of Homeland Security memoranda show that within one month of the shooting incident, government investigators had identified the smuggler as Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila.

But this seems to contradict U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's claim that Aldrete-Davila came forward through a Mexican lawyer who offered to identify his client in exchange for immunity.

A March 14, 2005, memo notes that Aldrete-Davila's mother had contacted the mother-in-law of a U.S. Border Patrol agent to talk about the shooting and a memo from four months later talks about an interview with that Border Patrol agent. Also, the immunity agreement offered to Aldrete-Davila promises no prosecution against him will result from his testimony and reveals that it was signed on March 15, 2005.

Andy Ramirez, chairman of Friends of the Border Patrol, says the documents raise questions as to why Sutton chose to prosecute the Border Patrol agents rather than the drug smuggler.

The White House also has invited Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. to talk about the issues.

Rohrabacher, who has expressed outrage at the confinement of the two law enforcement officers, said he has no doubt this is a response to pressure – including campaigns for a pardon and House resolutions to throw out the case – noting that previously the president and his senior staff would not return phone calls from him and other senior congressmen.

Rohrabacher previously told WND he considered the president's handling of the case "disgraceful."

Now is this the same prosecutor who prosecuted Compean and Ramos?

If so (which is what I thought I understood from this all), then the thought came to me, is all the law enforcement within his jurisdiction coming under fire for going after illegals?

Has anyone else wondered if he is being bribed by some of the big drug cartels? Possibly his decision making is being based on being swayed by the cartels money. Either that or he is a plum idiot (maybe it is both)!

You have to wonder if it is conincidental that the border patrol agents that are jailed are hispanic Americans. I'm beginning to think that they are deliberately made examples because of the fact that they do their jobs, even if they happen to share an ethnicity with the illegals crossing our border. Does anyone else see a pattern?

There is a point there WhatMattersMost, this deputy also seems to share in that as well.

I felt that Sutton was on the take with some cartels though, but maybe those cartels get really ticked and want vengeance when they see the law-enforement was Latino.

Or.......these were Latino officers that they could not buy off, had been approached before? I don't know, there are a lot of potential scenarios when it comes to corruption. I do think the prosecutor is corrupt though.