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

Lawmakers Request Investigation Of Prosecutor Johnny Sutton In Border Agents Case

This is big. Johnny Sutton will now have to give account of himself for the way he railroaded U.S. Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean.

From a Press Release coming out of the office of Congressman Walter B. Jones (R-NC):

In a letter this week to the U.S. Department of Justice, Representative Walter B. Jones (R-NC) – joined by Reps. Ted Poe (R-TX), Virgil Goode (R-VA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), John Culberson (R-TX), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Don Manzullo (R-IL) – requested that the Office of Professional Responsibility investigate the actions of U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton in the prosecution of U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean. The agents entered federal prison on January 17, 2007, to begin serving sentences of 11 and 12 years respectively for shooting and wounding a Mexican drug smuggler who brought 743 pounds of marijuana across the U.S. border in 2005.

Part of the letter reads:

“It is our firm conviction that, by these actions, Mr. Sutton is guilty of prosecutorial misconduct, which has imposed an irreversible and substantial effect upon Mr. Ramos and Mr. Compean and their families. Prior to the return of the indictment against Mr. Ramos and Mr. Compean, Mr. Sutton must have known that it was impossible for there to be probable cause for a ‘crime’ never enacted by Congress, as authoritatively and previously decided by the United States Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. According to Rule 3.09 of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct, a prosecuting attorney is to ‘refrain from prosecuting ... a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause.’” “Mr. Sutton has manipulated the federal criminal code to obtain a conviction against two U.S. Border Patrol agents, preferring to win at all costs over his duty as a United States Attorney, and his duty under the Texas Rules of Professional Conduct. This is a matter which your office has a duty to investigate and, on the basis of what we now know, to remedy.”

You can access the complete Press Release on-line here:

Complaint Of Prosecutorial Misconduct Filed Against U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton
Walter B Jones
United States House Of Representatives
June 19, 2008

You can read a complete copy of the letter on-line here:

Complaint For Prosecutorial Miconduct Against Johnny Sutton, United States Attorney, Western District Of Texas
(Letter is in .pdf format)