Bordering on insanity

The strange case of Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos and Jose Compean deserves your attention. More importantly, it deserves the attention of President Bush.

Ramos and Compean are those two former Border Patrol agents who were convicted of shooting a Mexican drug smuggler as he ran from them in February 2005. The smuggler, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, fled back into Mexico, and it was unclear at the time whether he had been hit with a bullet or not, but later it was claimed that a bullet fired by Ramos had hit Aldrete-Davila in the buttocks.

Apparently worried about the consequences of shooting at a suspect, Ramos and Compean collected the spent casings and discarded them. They also may not have reported the incident to their superiors, although this aspect of the case remains in question.

A few weeks later, Aldrete-Davila contacted a friend of the family, Rene Sanchez, who is himself a Border Patrol agent, and he worked through Sanchez to obtain immunity for his testimony against Ramos and Compean.

In other words, the drug smuggler accused the Border Patrol agents of wrongly shooting him, and he convinced a federal prosecutor to go after Ramos and Compean and to leave him alone.

Perhaps if that were the end of the story, we might all just wonder about the ironies of the case, and speculate about whether or not the agents had done anything wrong or not. Typically, law officers are not permitted to shoot at fleeing suspects, except under certain circumstances such as concern for the well-being of others or belief that the suspect had already used deadly force in the commission of a crime.

Because of the uncertainty which that creates in the administration of law, I for one had been prepared to say that I could not resolve whether justice had been done in sending Ramos and Compean to prison. I did not like it certainly, but I was willing to put my faith in the jury's decision.

All that changed last weekend, however, when Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos was brutally attacked in his prison cell by five inmates at the Yazoo City Federal Penitentiary in Mississippi. These inmates had apparently seen a report about Ramos on "America's Most Wanted" earlier that night and had recognized Ramos as a former Border Patrol agent.

The men who attacked him are believed to have been illegal immigrants themselves and they yelled in Spanish "Maten a la migra! Kill the Border Patrol agent!" while they kicked and punched him.

This incident led me and thousands of others to study the facts of the case anew and to conclude that Ramos had been mistreated not just by his fellow inmates, but by the justice system and by the Border Patrol itself, which sent him into battle without giving him the legal tools to defend himself.

Certainly now it is time for all Americans and particularly for President Bush to look at this case with new eyes. The president, of course, has the power to pardon the Border Patrol agents and declare that for their safety, he is freeing them from prison. He has pardoned drug dealers in the past; it seems like now he might want to consider pardoning two men who shot a drug dealer.

Above and beyond concerns for the safety of the two officers, there are numerous doubts about the evidence in the case, and about the handling of the case, which would make it easy for the president to use his constitutional pardon power to free Compean and Ramos.

Here are just a few of the irregularities in the case:

. Aldrete-Davila and his childhood friend Rene Sanchez contradicted each other numerous times in their testimony, including Sanchez's disputed claim that he had not spoken with Aldrete-Davila in many years; Aldrete-Davila recalled many contacts.

. According to a U.S. congressman (Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif.), three of the jurors said after the trial that they were leaning toward a not guilty verdict but were told by the jury foreman that the judge wanted them to "go along with majority."

. Another U.S. congressman (Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas) said this week that the Department of Homeland Security has admitted the agency misled Congress when it reported that Ramos and Compean had said they "wanted to shoot some Mexicans." Homeland Security apparently just plain made up the story, which certainly does not instill confidence in the federal government which, through another arm, prosecuted the agents.

. A third U.S. congressman (Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.) wrote to the director of the federal Bureau of Prisons on the day when Ramos and Compean were incarcerated to "urgently request" that the two agents be segregated from the general prison population for their own safety. Although he says he was assured that the prisoners would be segregated, Ramos was returned to the general population where he was assaulted.

And if you think it is just Republicans raising questions about this trial, you are wrong. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., requested a Senate hearing on the case in August 2006. Here's what she said:

"After reading the August 11th statement of U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton on the convictions and news reports regarding this case, I have significant concerns that there may have been a serious miscarriage of justice… It appears that the facts do not add up or justify the length of the sentences for these Agents, let alone their conviction on multiple counts."

Certainly, after the beating of Ramos, it is time for all of us to take a look at this case and determine just what kind of country we want - one that goes out of its way to protect drug smugglers or one that goes out of its way to prevent drug smuggling and to prevent illegal immigration. Whether or not, the Border Patrol agents made all the right decisions in this case, they were clearly doing their job and trying to do it well when the incident happened. It is hard to see why they should go to jail, and it is really hard to see why anyone else would ever want to be a Border Patrol agent again.

The prosecution bent over backwards in this case to take the side of the drug smuggler against the Border Patrol agents. But the rest of us have to ask, what good do we think comes from the decision of the prosecutor to grant immunity to a drug smuggler in order to imprison two Border Patrol agents. Deciding to fire the Border Patrol agents would be one thing; even deciding to prosecute them might be acceptable if there were enough evidence independent of the smuggler's testimony. But it is entirely optional whether to grant immunity to known criminals in order to complete a prosecution.

It seems that in this case the prosecutor sided with the devil in order to pull the wings off of two tarnished angels. And they didn't just grant Aldrete-Davila immunity once. He was arrested with another drug load even before the trial began, and yet he was allowed to testify and released back into Mexico again as if nothing had ever happened. The jury never heard anything about it. He had all the rights, and the officers had none. Again, I have to question exactly how this prosecution benefited society.

In the same vein, one must question the Border Patrol's official policy of not pursuing suspects. That's right, according to statements by Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof during the trial, it's not just incorrect to shoot a fleeing suspect; it's incorrect to even chase him:

"It is a violation of Border Patrol regulations to go after someone who is fleeing," she said. "The Border Patrol pursuit policy prohibits the [vehicular] pursuit of someone."

Well, heck, no wonder the Border Patrol is losing the war against illegal immigration - they are fighting under the same rules of engagement as the U.S. military: "Do whatever is necessary as long as it doesn't make anyone angry or result in bodily harm or loss of civil rights."

Ramos and Campeon may or may not be heroes, but they are certainly not criminals. President Bush needs to pardon them and then he needs to ensure that the Border Patrol has the tools to do its job right in the future.

Border security starts with border sanity.