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Ex-border agents sentenced for shooting smuggler (AP)

Associated Press

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL

October 20, 2006

Associated Press

U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton has received dozens of angry letters and phone calls decrying the prosecution of a pair of former U.S. Border Patrol agents who were sentenced Thursday to more than 10 years in federal prison.

The agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, were convicted earlier this year of shooting Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, a drug smuggling suspect, as the man fled across the Rio Grande into Mexico after a confrontation with the agents.

Ramos was sentenced to 11 years and one day, while Compean was ordered to serve 12 years in prison. The men were ordered to report to prison by Jan. 17.

Public support for the agents, both married fathers, has swelled since their convictions earlier this year. Several prominent lawmakers, including Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, have pledged to hold congressional hearings on the case.

Judge Kathleen Cardone, who rejected a defense request for a new trial Thursday, reduced the suggested sentences for several charges but was required by law to send the men to prison for 10 years on the charge that they used a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Sutton, who oversaw prosecutors in El Paso who handled the case, said much of the public support for the former agents is a direct result of talk radio and cable television support for the men.

"Frankly, if I only got my information from talk radio and cable news I would hate Johnny Sutton too," Sutton said.

He said he would have preferred to prosecute Aldrete. But there was no evidence linking him to a van load of marijuana found after a car and foot chase with the agents that ended with Ramos and Compean shooting at and wounding Aldrete in the buttocks. And the agents, he said, clearly violated the law.

"I feel no sympathy for the alien," Sutton said after the sentencing. "I feel he should be in prison. If we find him smuggling drugs again" we will put him in prison.

But Sutton said he was forced to charge Ramos and Compean because they broke the law when they shot Aldrete, didn't report it and then tampered with evidence by picking up several spent bullet casings.

"We cannot look the other way and we will not," Sutton said. He said the Border Patrol badge is "not a license to shoot people. It is not a license to shoot unarmed suspects who are running away from them."

Before the sentence was announced, Walter Boyaki, a U.S. civil lawyer for Aldrete, asked Cardone to do her job "and not have the possibility that we put a bull's-eye on every illegal alien and say 'Go get 'em.'" Boyaki said Aldrete was physically incapacitated and couldn't be in court Thursday.

In asking that the sentences be short, Mary Stillinger, Ramos' lawyer, argued Aldrete exhibited "very threatening behavior" the day he was shot and that should have some influence on the sentence.

Aldrete was shot, she said, "not because he's a drug dealer, not because he's an illegal alien, but because of his actions."

Compean's lawyer, Chris Antcliff, asked Cardone to consider Compean's history and his family — his wife gave birth to their third child about a month ago.

"It's a hard case to come to grips with ... this is a good man in an unfortunate situation," Antcliff said.

Border Patrol officials in El Paso have declined to discuss if the men had ever been disciplined before their 2005 arrests and eventual firings. Lawyers for both men have said they had no previous trouble in the agency.

But according to court records, Ramos was suspended for two days without pay in 2003 because he did not report being arrested in a domestic violence case. El Paso County court records show Ramos was arrested at least twice, though the charges were never pursued.

Doug Mosier, a Border Patrol spokesman in El Paso, said he could not discuss the Ramos case because of privacy issues. But he said any agent who is arrested must report that arrest to a supervisor, regardless of the outcome of the any criminal charges.

Lawyers for Ramos and Compean have pledged to appeal the convictions.

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