Ramos and Compean get their day on the Hill
Today's Senate hearing on the case of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean seemed to fall on the side of the two Border Patrol agents, who received lengthy prison terms for shooting a drug smuggler in the rump. "This really is a case of prosecutorial ... overreaction in charging," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman at the hearing. "The public sees two Border Patrol agents serving long prison sentences while an admitted drug smuggler goes free," Texas Sen. John Cornyn said, adding that he has "serious concerns about the judgment calls made during the prosecution of this case." From the Chronicle story:
The senators bored in on some of the case's most nagging questions: Why the drug smuggler, who had been driving a van with a million-dollar payload of marijuana, was given immunity to testify against Ramos and Compean; why the trafficker was given unfettered permission to cross into the United States after the agents were charged; and whether he used that border-crossing privilege to bring in another million-dollar marijuana haul just months after the February 2005 incident near El Paso.
Taking issue with the Houston Chronicle story, which in the lede calls Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila "a fleeing, unarmed Mexican drug smuggler": Nobody knows if the guy was, indeed, unarmed! He fled! That sort of hampers any attempt to search the guy for weapons, eh? And what drug smuggler with half a brain would transport a million dollars worth of marijuana across the dangerous border lands without a weapon to protect himself and the stash?
the sententses of these two men doing their job needs to be overturned, expunged from their records and they need to be rewarded and restored to their positions for doing their job, allthough I doubt they would return to work for people that turned on them. It must really be satisfying to know you work for someone who expects you to a job and then doesn't stand behind you when you do it.