Bush Finally Does Something About Wrongly Convicted Border Agents

It isn't perfect and still doesn't rid me of the feeling that Compean and Ramos were wrongly convicted and being held as political prisoners, but it is a start.

President Bush commuted the sentances of Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. Their prison terms will end on March 20 of this year.

Deb Riechmann has this:

Ramos and Compean became a rallying point among conservatives and on talk shows where their supporters called them heroes. Nearly the entire bipartisan congressional delegation from Texas and other lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle pleaded with Bush to grant them clemency.

Why did all of this happen? Read on:

Compean and Ramos, were convicted of shooting admitted drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the buttocks as he fled across the Rio Grande, away from an abandoned van load of marijuana. The border agents argued during their trials that they believed the smuggler was armed and that they shot him in self defense. The prosecutor in the case said there was no evidence linking the smuggler to the van of marijuana.

The "prosecutor" in this case is Johnny Sutton. In order to ensure that Ramos and Compean were convocted, Sutton issued a Humanitarian Visa to Davila in exchange for immunity and his testimony against the border agents. Davila went on to use the Visa to continue his efforts at smuggling drugs into the United States. Further, Sutton held back evidence that at least three jurors said would have caused them to change their votes.

That makes Johhny Sutton possibly the most ignorant prosecutor of all time.

Compean and Ramos got railroaded and President Bush knew it.

This should have been a full pardon. We will still work for a full pardon but won't be expecting it from Barack Obama.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Bush Commutes Sentences Of Former US Border Agents
Deb Riechmann
Associated Press via Yahoo News
January 19, 2009