WASHINGTON – On Jan. 19, 2009, President George W. Bush granted commutations of sentence to two individuals:
COMMUTATIONS:
Jose Alonso Compean – El Paso, TexasOffense: Assault with a dangerous weapon, and aiding and abetting, 18 USC § 7, 113 and 2; assault with serious bodily injury, and aiding and abetting, 18 USC § 7, 113 and 2; discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, 18 USC § 924; deprivation of rights under color of law, 18 USC § 242.Sentence: Nov. 12, 2008; Western District of Texas; 12 years in prison, three years of supervised release following the prison term, $2,000 fine.Terms of commutation: Prison sentence to expire on March 20, 2009, leaving intact and in effect the three year term of supervised release with all its conditions and the fine.
Ignacio Ramos, a/k/a Ignacio Ramos Jr. – El Paso, TexasOffense: Assault with a dangerous weapon, and aiding and abetting, 18 USC § 7, 113 and 2; assault with serious bodily injury, and aiding and abetting, 18 USC § 7, 113 and 2; discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, 18 USC § 924; deprivation of rights under color of law, 18 USC § 242.Sentence: Nov. 13, 2008; Western District of Texas; 11 years and one day in prison, three years of supervised release following the prison term, $2,000 fine.Terms of commutation: Prison sentence to expire on March 20, 2009, leaving intact and in effect the three year term of supervised release with all its conditions and the fine.
HFS. Shrub did something right. Good on ya, W...
That is all.
5 comments:
Sorry, Jay, I'm taking the other side on that one.
So our laws are for the peons only, and shouldn't be applied to the King's Men when they shoot people we don't like?
Look--the two CBP agents were convicted of using a firearms during a crime. (Their misstep wasn't shooting the dude, but trying to cover up the shooting by collecting their shell casings and lying about it.)
How many regular guys get nailed and sent to the federal pen for "firearms-related crimes" by prosecutors in a similar stretch of the law, and they don't have a POTUS to commute their sentence?
When you pass laws, they have to apply to everyone, without exception, otherwise you open up a huge can of worms. If the electorate doesn't want mandatory sentences for using a firearm in a crime, then the electorate needs to convince their Congresscritters not to pass such laws.
If you can make an exception for federal agents when they shoot Really Bad People, then the Feds get a blank check, because anyone can end up with that designation based on the popular opinion of the day. Do you really want to sign *that* blank check for the Feds?
Marco,
I agree with your sentiment on this, but have you followed the case, even a little?
It's a lot deeper than how you've paraphrased it.
It goes a lot deeper than that Jay. I'll not say Ramos and Compean were bad dudes, but they screwed this deal up. Maybe their heart was in the right place, but there is still the rule of law to consider. To paraphrase Locke, we've gotta protect even the rights of the bad guys if we want to protect our own. Little Shrub's commutation of these two is a continuation of his damn the torpedoes attitude, intended as a feel-good deal for his dearly beloved neocons.
Ramos and Compean probably didn't deserve the sentences they got (Johnny Sutton overdid things and needs his butt kicked for it), but they did deserve some form of punishment.
The whole situation is unfortunate and just another symptom of this nation's ill-advised drug interdiction policy.
Marko,
The rules did apply; the CBP agents were jailed for their misdeeds.
Bush's commutation reduces the zealotry and politics behind their sentencing.
Let's face facts here: Guys in Dorchester serve a HELL of a lot less time than 4 years for shooting someone in the ass. Most of the time that's pled down to aggravated assault.
Compean and Ramos were rightly fired, jailed, and tried in court for the cover-up. They were railroaded because of the politics behind the US/Mexico border, and received, IMHO, a sentence far in excess of their actual crime.
Your point stands, of course - I completely agree that we don't want to give the Feds the impression that it's perfectly okay to shoot a fleeing suspect and then cover it up.
But they lost their jobs. They went to jail. They served four years, which is only a couple of years less than the national average for murder (71 months). A pardon would have been a different matter - I don't know that I would have agreed with a pardon. A commutation, OTOH, I can.
Mule Breath,
I don't quite get what you mean. In one breath you agree that they "probably didn't deserve the sentences they got", yet you disagree with a commutation? That doesn't compute.
Like I said to Marko, a pardon, which would have wiped the slate clean, would have been a little too much, and I could totally understand viewing THAT as Bush's SOP to the "neocons".
What a commutation does, IMHO, is address and correct the overzealotry of the prosecution in this case...
Jay,
I'll talk slower. The pair broke the law and thus should be punished by the law.
They were charged with 5 crimes and convicted on 4, one of which was "discharge of a firearm in commission of a crime of violence", which carries a mandatory 10 year sentence. Sentencing guidelines (read what I have to say about those over on my blog) gave the judge no choice.
The US Attorny had discretion and did not have to include a charge with such a high sentence. He could have and did convict on lesser charges with lesser sentences. One and two year sentences would perhaps have been more appropriate than 11 and 12 year sentences.
Johnny Sutton grandstanded and got an excessive sentence.
Is that more clear?
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