Prosecutor Says Media Coverage Distorted Border Agent Case
By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
January 26, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - The federal prosecutor who helped convict two U.S. Border Patrol agents sentenced to more than a decade in jail for shooting a suspected drug smuggler who illegally crossed the border from Mexico understands why the case stirred public outrage.

However, he attributes the anger to the portrayal of the case by the news media and said the media version "is unfortunately not the narrative the jury heard" before convicting the two.

Among the inaccuracies U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton said were spread by the media, arguably the most startling was the widely reported allegation that suspected drug-runner Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila was offered immunity for a second, subsequent drug offense, something Sutton flatly denies.

However, Sutton did say in an interview that there is an ongoing investigation involving the Mexican (see related story).

Sutton, the chief federal prosecutor for the western district of Texas since October 2001, has faced intense scrutiny since the convictions of Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, who were sentenced to 11 and 12 years respectively in jail.

"The American public hears border patrol agents went to jail and a drug dealer was set free," Sutton told Cybercast News Service.

On Feb. 17, 2005, the two agents first encountered Aldrete-Davila in a van containing 743 pounds of marijuana. When Aldrete-Davila tried to flee, the agents shot him in the buttocks as he was crossing back into Mexico.

Sutton sought out Aldrete-Davila in Mexico and offered him immunity from prosecution if he returned to the United States to testify against the two agents.

After a two-week trial last year, Ramos and Compean were convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon, assault with serious bodily injury, discharge of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence, willfully violating the illegal immigrant's constitutional rights, lying about the incident and failing to report the truth.

Sutton said in the interview that evidence in the trial made it clear the agents did not know Aldrete-Davila had been smuggling drugs at the time they shot at him 15 times. (He was hit once.)

"They didn't know if he was an American citizen or not. ... It was outrageous behavior, and prosecutors can't look the other way."

Much of the public outrage over the episode arose not just from the fact that Sutton brought the case, but from the tenacity with which he prosecuted it.

The agents' union and Republican members of Congress have called for investigations.

"This U.S. attorney is closely allied with the president of the United States," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for border agents.

Sutton has a long association with President Bush. From 1995 to 2000, he served as then Texas Gov. George W. Bush's criminal justice policy director.

Before he was appointed to the post of U.S. attorney, Sutton served as a policy coordinator in the Bush-Cheney transition team when the president was first elected.

As for granting immunity in this case, Sutton said Aldrete-Davila left no fingerprints in the van with the marijuana, leaving law enforcement powerless to prosecute him.

"I had the choice of prosecuting nobody or prosecuting these officers who covered up the scene of the crime [by removing spent shell cartridges]," Sutton said.

"We didn't give up much in the use of immunity. We offered immunity. Otherwise, he would not come back from Mexico," he said.

In the region he covers, there has been 14 shooting incidents by border agents in the last nine years, four in which the suspect was killed, Sutton said.

Each time, he said, the agent wasn't prosecuted, because they had reasonable explanations for using deadly force.

"Most Border Patrol agents know what the facts are and are outraged with the agents," Sutton said.

"Ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine of Border Patrol agents do it right. The idea that they would support agents that would shoot an unarmed man running away, cover it up and file a police report is outrageous," he added.

'Actions were proper'

But Bonner said the anger among border agents is in fact directed at Sutton.

"This will have a chilling effect on all law enforcement officers," the union president told Cybercast News Service. "Why risk going to prison to get the bad guys?"

"Their actions were proper," Bonner said.

"They reacted to a threat against them. Their only offense was not making an oral report to their supervisor. That's not a crime. That's an administrative oversight. The agency's own rules say that warrants a five-day suspension," he added.

Bonner concedes that one of the agents did gather the shell casings and toss them into the canal but insists that was a product of post traumatic stress disorder, not a cover-up.

"He was just assaulted and saw his life flash before his eyes," the union president said. "If his intent was to cover up the scene of the crime, he would have taken them a long way, not next to the scene of the incident where they could be easily recovered."

Bonner further alleges that Sutton has a history of going after law enforcement officers, citing cases of the prosecutor going after an FBI agent and a deputy sheriff.

Sutton told Cybercast News Service he has prosecuted fewer than 10 law enforcement officers during his tenure, which began in October 2001.

As for the other claims by the union, all the issues raised were part of the trial last year. They were countered not only by Aldrete-Davila's testimony, but by that of other border agents in the vicinity.

"The jury heard all that," Sutton said. "We had all kinds of evidence beyond the testimony of a smuggler."

See Also:
Bush Slammed as Border Patrol Agents Begin Prison Terms (Jan. 17, 2007)

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