Posted on 12/18/2007 3:35:08 PM PST by T.L.Sink
Why do these guys deserve a “special” consideration apart from any other federal defendant who has been selected for prosecution?
They often prosecute people, not crimes- ask any defense attorney. Many citizens who were in the midst of making the world a better place as parents, physicians and builders of businesses have been cut down by the same awesome political power that destroyed these guys.
At the very least, Compean and Ramos, who should not ever be confused with The Lone Ranger and Tonto, were over- charged and over-sentenced ... as it turns out at the behest of the Mexican government who went to their friends at the top to maintain their control of the border.
I could see these bad boys severely reprimanded, bad letters in the old service jacket, suspended without pay, etc. etc. same as for any cop union member who screws up. 10 years for a LEO using a firearm?
Tough case. Tough cases make for bad law.
That would be great. A much larger question has been raised by this whole affair by a huge number of responsible people who’ve been carefully investigating it and who are not conspiracy theorists. And that is that there seems to be a prima face connection between certain U.S. officials and the Mexican government to cover up the facts. Of course, at this point that can’t be proved. But there are so many irregularities and bizarre circumstanes involved that there should at the least be an investigation.
A huge number of people have carefully read the transcripts including not only very competent investigative reporters but legal experts. To cite only one, there is Congressman Ted Poe who is a former federal judge. He’s appeared on numerous programs many times and has studied the matter thoroughly. There was recently an objective non-partisan panel of judges whose report cited an “alarming” number of judicial irregularities and procedural errors. At the very least a thorough investigation and review is in order.
Ramos cross by Kanof, Vol. XIII, p. 82 line 25 and p. 83 line 1 - 7Now if you have evidence or facts otherwise it would be nice to see them.25 Q. And you did not tell -- you had two supervisors there at
1 the scene, right?
2 A. Right.
3 Q. And you didn't tell either of them, according to the
4 policy, that you discharged your firearm?
5 A. No.
6 Q. And neither did Mr. Compean?
7 A. No.
Compean cross by Gonzalez Vol. XIV, p 169, lines 6-166 Q. Now, let me show you Government's Exhibit 75. Do you
7 recognize that? Is this part of your firearms policy manual?
8 A. Yes, sir.
9 Q. And I'm referring you to page 21 of 64, Number 2 on that
10 page. Doesn't it tell you that you're required to report a
11 shooting within one hour?
12 A. Yes, sir.
13 Q. And you knew that it was your responsibility, correct?
14 A. Yes, sir.
15 Q. And you didn't do that, did you?
16 A. No, sir.
Nothing justifies violating the Constitution.
It isn't. The power to control funds lies with Congress. It is part of the balance of powers.
The power of pardon is reserved for the Executive.
It's not a pardon. They would still be convicted felons, and if a future Congress removed the ban on funding their detention, they would likely go back to jail.
It is probably a bad idea. However, it is not a pardon, and it doesn't even interfere with the President's ability to pardon them if he chooses to do so.
We cannot cherry pick, like liberals, which parts of the constitution we want to ignore.
The Constitution grants Congress power over the budget. This is within their authority. Just because the President also has the authority to pardon them, does not exclude Congress from exercising their authority.
Yes the Judge ruled it inadmissible. However, we don't have a transcript of that evidence hearing, or at least did not have one at the time I was reading the transcripts, because it covered a pending investigation.
So we don't know it the Judge was told the whole story before ruling in that way. However, the Judge's actions still don't make much sense to me, and from what we have heard from the appeals court so far, they don't appear to be very impressed with the withholding of that information either, so it appears possible that the appeals court may order a new trial.
So arguing that if that information was given to the defense and may have led to a different verdict is assinine.,/i>
While we really don't know if the prosecutors fully disclosed the information about the second run and whatever else was found in the course of that investigation. I did misspeak to some extent. The real issue was that the information was withheld from the jury, not so much as to who withheld it. The defense was not allowed to present the information because the Judge ruled in favor of the prosecution to suppress it, though we really don't know if the judge made that ruling based on all the evidence or not.
If critical information in the prosecutors possession was withheld from the judge prior to making that decision, and that information could have had a major impact on the trial, I’ll be the first to criticize them for it.
I absolutely hate when they dump stuff in big bills and then various factions gripe mightily when parts of it get discarded and everyone tries to make political hay.
This is something the President should be doing. It should not be done through an amendment to an bill in congress. I wish Tancredo would put his concern where his mouth is and approach the President himself.
I very much want to see these men pardoned, but why does no one have the wherewithal to go to the President and do it properly?
Right - and the judicial irregularities and inequities are so apparent in this whole episode that even liberals like Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) of the Judiciary Committee are joining with conservatives like Rohrabacher to investigate this apparent railroading of the Border Patrol agents. Even the minority who think that Ramos and Compean didn’t do everything “by the book” are outraged by sentences imposed that are harsher than most murderers receive.
Tancredo was told by Rove years ago never to darken the door of the White House because he interfered with the amnesty legislation proposed by the Bush administration. Putting a funding provision in the bill is something that congressmem have always done and always will do. Like it or not, it’s a regular part of the legislative process.
The Judge wasn’t interested in the story because it had no exculpatory evidence on whether the shoot that day by R&C was a good one. The only piece of information that might have been relevant would have been if there was evidence that OAD was armed on the second run because that could be used to impeach his testimony that he was unarmed. If he made a second run it would have had no impact on his testimony that the Fabens run was his first. If there was a second run it would have had no impact on his testimony that he was making the run to get money to pay for an operation for his mother.
I don’t know how to make this any clearer. To me it appears the judge ruled properly. Information presented about the second run would add nothing to the body of evidence for the jurors to make a ruling and it might improperly prejudice the jury.
I don’t like it any more than you, but these are the facts.
“However, the Judge’s actions still don’t make much sense to me, and from what we have heard from the appeals court so far, they don’t appear to be very impressed with the withholding of that information either, so it appears possible that the appeals court may order a new trial.”
Well, you’re hearing a jaundiced view from unreliable sources. It is the appeals court judges duty to grill the attorneys on every aspect and that line of questioning has been blown way out of proportion. The fact is the defense was aware of the second load, tried to present it at trial and the judge ruled it inadmissible. The prosecution attorneys did their job in arguing against it’s admittance, if the appeal judges have any issues with it, it would be regarding the trial judges decision, not efforts by the prosecution.
“While we really don’t know if the prosecutors fully disclosed the information about the second run and whatever else was found in the course of that investigation.”
I’m sorry. R&C pardon advocates have been screaming about the “information” withheld from the defense regarding the second run. Are you saying no one knows if anything at all was withheld? Are you saying R&C pardon supporters have been misrepresenting the facts?
Are you saying they should be pardoned on the charges relating to the cover up?
“Right - and the judicial irregularities and inequities are so apparent in this whole episode...”
Which judicial irregularities are those?
They had nothing, zilch, zippo.?
They had the testimony of two BP agents over a illegal alian drug dealer.
You probably believe Davila was alone in a van with 800 lbs. of pot and unarmed, but I know better.
I know the SOB was aiming a gun back at the BP when he was shot.
The Lou Dobbs’ CNN transcript has the references for the judicial report as well as the findings of congressional members, over 150 of whom are directly investigating this judicial farce or who are requesting pardons.
OAD was allowed to sit on the stand and feed the jury a story that his smuggling drugs was a one time thing that he did because he got into financial trouble and needed the money so he could get his certifications so he could get his commercial drivers license back.
He actually even claimed he didn't know what was in the truck. He claimed he didn't know it was drugs. He said that he didn't know what the overpowering smell from the hundreds of pounds of marijuana in the van he was driving was.
He got to tell a fictional story about being an innocent guy who got down on his luck, and when an opportunity was offered to him to make the money he needed to get back on his feet, he took the opportunity without asking as many questions as he should have.
The only people that know if OAD had a gun or something that might have appeared to be a gun in his hand are OAD, Compean, and Ramos.
Any evidence about the credibility of Ramos and Compean was allowed. Evidence that would have severely damaged the credibility of OAD and shown that he had even violated the immunity agreement that was granted to him was excluded.
The defense couldn't even ask OAD is he was still in contact with the drug smugglers and what his relationship was with them, which would go toward motive to lie, since the drug smugglers would likely want Compean and Ramos convicted. However, the defense was not allowed to pursue that because the topic of his continued relationship with the drug smugglers was rules off limits.
If there was a second run it would have had no impact on his testimony that he was making the run to get money to pay for an operation for his mother.
Are you saying no one knows if anything at all was withheld?
I'm saying we simply don't know the details about the second run, or what additional evidence the government has about OAD. The hearing about the second run was not included in the court transcripts from the trial that were released. That isn't surprising since they likely contained information about an ongoing investigation at the time.
Unless more information has been released about the evidence hearing, we simply don't know if something was withheld because we don't know what was disclosed.
We don't even really know what information that the defense was barred from presenting, so it's impossible to know if information was withheld.
It is likely that information wasn't overtly withheld.
What concerns me most about this case is how it was investigated. The spend a lot of time and effort investigating Ramos and Compean, looking for anything that might make them appear guilty, but it appears like the government spent very little effort investigating OAD other than interviewing him.
The government didn't know that he had retained a lawyer for a civil suit against the government. They didn't know that it was one of their own border agents that knew OADs family that had put him in contact with the lawyer.
The defense simply doesn't have the resources to investigate if OAD had a criminal history, and might have been likely to have been carrying a gun. The government has considerably more resources, but they don't seem to have bothered using them. They simply took OAD at his word. After they found out that OAD had been shot with Ramos' gun, they investigated nothing that might lead to evidence that would harm their case.
They put the resources of the federal government on the task of convicting them, not on fully investigating what had happened and the credibility of their witness.
The amount of things they didn't know about OADs activities that came up at trial shows that either they didn't do a very good job interviewing their witness and investigating his story, or that they simply decided that they didn't want to look too closely because they would have had to disclose what they found.
Its' soul is over here to the right, waving goodbye.
“They had nothing, zilch, zippo.? They had the testimony of two BP agents over a illegal alian drug dealer.”
At the time of the initial inquiry they knew nothing of OAD and had no way reach him in Mexico, the long arm of US law doesn’t reach there. As for the “testimony” by R&C, that didn’t come until the trial, after they were arrested, which was after they failed to report the shooting and when asked by their supervisors, claimed nothing had happened.
So yes, because of R&C’s inability to apprehend OAD and their failure to report the incident, they had nothing.
“You probably believe Davila was alone in a van with 800 lbs. of pot and unarmed, but I know better. I know the SOB was aiming a gun back at the BP when he was shot.”
You must be psychic.
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