Mexico Trucker Online

A US District Judge today resentenced Former Border Patrol Agent Jose Alonso Compean to 10 years for his conviction of using a weapon in the commission of a felony, plus two years for assault and other charges.

Compean and former agent Ignacio Ramos were convicted in 2006 of shooting admitted drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete Davila and trying to cover it up.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out some convictions against Ramos and Compean earlier this year, prompting Wednesday’s resentencing, but the court upheld the majority of the case. Ramos is due to be resentenced Thursday.

Compean’s lawyers said Wednesday they are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. One of his attorneys, Bob Baskett, didn’t immediately respond to calls seeking details on the review Wednesday.

Supporters, including members of Congress, have asked President Bush to pardon the men or at least commute their sentences.

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a former Border Patrol agent convicted of violating the civil rights of two undocumented immigrants to one year in prison.

Santiago Perez, 28, of Edinburg, Texas, admitted as part of a guilty plea in August that he assaulted a Guatemalan and a Mexican man on separate occasions. Perez admitted to authorities that he pistol-whipped a Guatemalan man in December 2006. Perez also admitted to taking a Mexican man out to a remote South Texas ranch and holding a gun to his head, and trying to force him to admit he was a smuggler.

In addition to the one-year prison sentence, Judge Nancy F. Atlas sentenced Perez to three years of supervision. Perez has been allowed to remain out on bond until he is ordered to report to prison.

Perhaps this is the solution to the Corbett case! Indictment and prosecution for violating Francisco Rivera’s Civil Rights by murdering him in cold blood.

Anyone thinks that is appropriate, call the United States Attorney General Civil Rights Division at (202)514-3204

Despite overwhelming evidence pointing to the guilt of Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbet in the murder of Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera, U.S. District Judge David C. Bury declared a mistrial at 1345 today.

More on this breaking story as it becomes available.

The prosecution has not indicated whether it will try a third time.

In the meantime, this embarrassment to Federal law enforcement is free to take the law into his own hands as he sees fit!

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DAY 9 (11/03)

UPDATE - The Jury has recessed for the day. 13 hours total time in deliberations.

The jury got the case at about 1430 on November 30. Deliberations began for about two hours, adjourned, resumed on Friday and adjourned once again until this morning.

the jurors sent a note to Judge David Bury with two requests.

They asked for access to “a scale to weigh something 30 pounds.” The judge denied their request.

The 30-pound figure is significant because that was the weight of the backpack worn by Dominguez-Rivera when he was shot.

The jurors also requested permission to get some magnifying glasses from their cars and bring them inside the jury room. The judge allowed them to do so.

On Friday, the panel had requested a large magnifying glass, and the judge gave them two different types.

It is not clear what the jurors are examining with the magnifying glasses

Let’s hope that is a sign of a just and proper verdict this time around

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The fate of a U.S. Border Patrol agent Nicholas Corbett charged with murdering Javier Dominguez Rivera is now in the hands of the jury.

U.S. District Judge David C. Bury handed over the case to a 12-person jury about 2:30 p.m. Thursday, after they sat through a morning of closing arguments that demonstrated contrasting accounts of what happened in the Jan. 12, 2007, shooting near the U.S.-Mexican border between Bisbee and Douglas that left Javier Dominguez Rivera dead.

 

Prosecutors say Corbett shot and killed Domínguez Rivera while the 22-year-old was trying to surrender. They brought his two brothers and one brother’s girlfriend to the stand to back that story and presented forensic and medical evidence to support it as well.

The deliberations and potential verdict the jurors reach — if they don’t end up deadlocked like the jury in the first trial in March — are being closely watched by many people in both the U.S. and Mexico in this high-profile case that has illustrated the tensions surrounding the illegal immigration issue since the shooting.
It’s anyone’s guess when, and if, the jurors will emerge with a unanimous decision required by the courts. A jury in the first trial could not reach a unanimous decision after three days of deliberations, and a mistrial was declared.

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The defense in the murder trial of Border Patrol agent Nicholas Corbett opened yesterday with testimony from a California pathologist hired by the defense.

Richard Mason, forensic pathologist from Santa Cruz County, California, is the same M.E. that was used in the first trial, Mason is short, likely close to eighty years old, and wears very thick Mr. Magoo like glasses.

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