Letters to the Editor
Rubick Cube
Published Letters: 65
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Irony, at its Finest!
[Read the article: The ballad of Ramos and Compean]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Alex Koppelman writes: "When people seek 'facts' only from sources with which they agree, it's possible for demonstrable untruths to enter the narrative and remain there unchallenged"
Truer words have not been spoken!
Alex, everything about this case was challenged. The Federal Government refused to comply with a Federal Judge's order to disclose what it had on the arrest of these two agents. They had a flimsy case powered purely by politics and these two agents were the scapegoats... and they knew it.
If you had bothered to keep up with this case from the very begining, you'd know how difficult it was to meet the burden of proof in order to have even *ONE* congressman listen... let alone SEVERAL FROM THE DEMOCRATIC SIDE.
Your article attempts to dismiss this solely on partisan principle, not on the premise that these two agents were persecuted because of politics.
You are a hypocrite.
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@John-E
[Read the article: The ballad of Ramos and Compean]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]John, I'm delighted that you've taken the time to actually read the testimonies. In keeping with that vein, read this:
>Judge Orders Hearing over Government’s Failure to Produce Records Concerning Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean
>Judicial Watch Seeks Records Detailing Contacts and “Deals” Between U.S. and Mexican Governments over Prosecutions
>(Washington, DC) -- Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, stated today that Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered a hearing for July 23, 2007 in response to Judicial Watch’s “Application for Injunctive Relief” in Judicial Watch v. Department of Homeland Security, et al. (No. 07-0506) against U.S. government agencies that have failed to search for or produce responsive records. Judicial Watch filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the State Department on January 24, 2007 seeking records of communications and actions by U.S. government personnel with Mexican officials concerning the prosecutions of U.S. Border Patrol Agents Ignacio “Nacho” Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean over the shooting of Mexican drug smuggler Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila on February 17, 2005.
>
Only one interpretation of this: The government is not being forthcoming about what actually happened.
Odd how you missed this...
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Senate Judiciary Hearing Excerpts July 17
[Read the article: The ballad of Ramos and Compean]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) documents, which remain under seal, show that Mr. Aldrete-Davila was the focus of a drug investigation into his reported stashing of 750 pounds of marijuana at a house in Clint, Texas, in November 2005 — nine months after he was shot.
The DEA's investigative reports, according to law-enforcement authorities and others who have seen the documents, said that the owner of the house, Cipriano Ortiz-Hernandez, picked Mr. Aldrete-Davila from a photo display and that the homeowner's brother, Jose Ortiz, told agents that Mr. Aldrete-Davila brought the marijuana from Juarez, Mexico, and identified him as "the person who was shot by Border Patrol agents."
Mrs. Feinstein also questioned why the agents were charged under a federal statute setting a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison. She said that as the law was written, it presupposes an underlying crime, adding that there was no underlying crime in the Ramos-Compean case.
She said the law needs to be clarified by Congress to prevent prosecutorial overcharging.
Ramos, 37, and Compean, 28, were sentenced in October on charges of causing serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence and a civil rights violation. The conviction came after Mr. Aldrete-Davila was located in Mexico by Homeland Security investigators.
In the packed audience was Patty Compean and Monica Ramos, both of whom shook their heads in disagreement when their husbands were accused of being responsible for the incident.
T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents all 11,000 of the agency's nonsupervisory personnel, disputed government claims that the agents were prosecuted because they shot an unarmed man, covered it up, destroyed evidence and filed false reports.
"Make no mistake about it — Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila was not simply a mule as the prosecution tried to claim who was looking to earn $1,000 so he could care for his sick mother," he said. "The wrongdoing here was bringing 743 pounds of marijuana into the country ... and the person who did that was granted immunity by our federal government."
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@John-E and @KStone
[Read the article: The ballad of Ramos and Compean]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First of all, KStone, if *READ CLOSELY*, you'll see that some of those postings come from the website of the SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE.
Second, John-E, let's assume you're correct about them shooting without knowing he committed a crime. You are suggesting that a 12 year sentence is adaquate for what they did?
Ok, tell you what: You find me a similar case that supports a law enforcement officer getting 12 years for shooting at a suspect.
The reason Diane Feinstein had trouble with this case is because she's a former prosecutor. She said herself: The federal statute applied to these two presupposes an underlying crime, which the prosecution did not prove.
Maybe you should read *ALL* of the Committee's findings before you post again...
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@John-E
[Read the article: The ballad of Ramos and Compean]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Soooo... you believe they should rot in jail for 12 years because you don't believe in mandatory sentencing? And you think that they, because they are law enforcement officers, do?
Yeah, that'll teach em, those bastards!!
First of all, this isn't about Mandatory Sentencing. If it were, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing would've been called "The Hearing to Determine the Appropriateness (or not) of Mandatory Sentencing blah blah blah"... or some such nonesense.
Instead they called it, "Hearing to Examine the Prosecution of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean"... meaning that something didn't smell right about THIS PARTICULAR PROSECUTION. Meaning some prosecutor, or judge, or jury did something that didn't pass the "smell test".