UPDATE – Suit was filed Tuesday
A $7.5 million wrongful death and Civil Rights lawsuit will be filed againstU.S. Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett .
A law firm representing the parents of a Mexican man killed by Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett recently submitted a $7.5 million claim notice, which is a prelude to filing a lawsuit, against him and the government.
Meanwhile, a personal lawsuit against Corbett is expected to be filed separately today in federal court in Tucson.
The federal tort claim, dated Dec. 2, is brought against Corbett for causing wrongful death, and against the Homeland Security Department, Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Justice Department for negligently employing Corbett.
“Agent Corbett, while acting within the course and scope of his agency with the United States Border Patrol, negligently and/or wrongfully shot and killed decedent. At the time of the shooting, decedent showed no resistance to agent Corbett’s demands and was on his knees in a submissive position,” states the document.
The claim seeks a total of $7.5 million, including $2.75 million for the victim’s father Renato Ariza Dominguez, $2.75 million for the victim’s mother Maria Clara Leonor Rivera Cordero, and $2 million for the estate of the deceased.
The document alleges that witness statements as well as the autopsy and ballistic analysis contradict Corbett’s version of the story. It says the death could have been avoided if Corbett was not negligent or did not act wrongfully.
The document also states the government should have known Corbett was involved in numerous incidents of misconduct that made him an inappropriate person to be a Border Patrol agent, such as assaulting a man in Pennsylvania, committing domestic violence and voicing his hatred of Mexicans.The assault and domestic violence claims did not result in convictions.
Corbett went on trial twice this year in federal court in Tucson on criminal charges of negligent homicide, manslaughter and second-degree murder for the death of Dominguez-Rivera, an illegal immigrant, near Naco on Jan. 12, 2007.
Both trials resulted in mistrials due to hung juries. Prosecutors have not officially decided whether or not they will take the case to trial a third time.
During the trials, Corbett claimed he shot Dominguez-Rivera in an act of self-defense to prevent the victim from smashing his head with a rock.
On Monday, Sean Chapman, the lead defense attorney representing Corbett in the criminal case, said “I have no comment” regarding the federal tort claim.
Bud Tuffly, president of the Local 2544 National Border Patrol Council in Tucson, said he could not comment specifically on the document because he has not seen it, but he said the union will continue to support Corbett.
“We will stand behind him 100 percent and we will defend him through this civil action as well,” he said. “We are not going to back down.”
Federal government officials named in the tort claim could not be reached for comment on Monday, including Annmarie Highsmith, associate chief counsel for the Homeland Security Department’s Customs and Border Protection.
On Monday, attorney Federico Castelan Sayre, of the law firm in Santa Ana, Calif., that submitted the federal tort claim, said a lawsuit for negligent hiring and supervision eventually will be filed. For now, the parties involved are given a period of six months in which to respond to the claim, he added.
Also, Sayre said, a civil rights lawsuit will be filed against Corbett today in U.S. District Court in Tucson in a way that allows federal officers to be sued in the same fashion as state officers. He said that filing is “basically receiving the final touches.” Rick Gonzales, a Tuscon attorney, will be the local counsel, with assistance by Sayre.
Sayre, who was born and raised in Tucson and graduated from the University of Arizona, practices law in California. He represented Rodney King against the City of Los Angeles, which resulted in a $3.8 million verdict, and has worked with Gonzales in the past.
Remember OJ Simpson? The burden of proof murder is much less in a civil action than in a criminal trial. Although in the case of this murdering coward, testimony and forensic evidence suggested the lying bastard Corbett was guilty of murdering in cold blood, Javier Francisco Rivera. The breakdown in the system was the jurors in both instances who violated their oath as jurors to look at the evidence with fairness and impartiality. This time, the result will be different. Wonder how Corbett feels now at the prospect of working for the family of the man he murdered for the rest of his life? Oh wait a minute! This coward will probably seek reassignment to Florida or another state where he can protect his assets, just as OJ Simpson did!
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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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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How do you defend a Border Patrol Agent where the evidence suggests the person is guilty? In the case of Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett, you call the witnesses LIARS! And why would you call the witnesses liars? Because they’re Mexican’s of course!
Not proper courtroom procedure but that seems to be the case here.
Last week, lead special prosecutor Grant Woods told the jury that Corbett’s story did not match the evidence from the scene. Meanwhile, he added, the eyewitnesses made statements that were consistent with the autopsy, ballistics and forensics. Keep in mind, it took Corbett several instances to come up with a story he thought would pass muster. It doesn’t.
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It took Jerome Corsi long enough to come up with distorted “facts” concerning the Nicholas Corbett case, but in a piece erroneously titled Mexico accused of framing border agent, he seems prepared to put the case in the Court of Public opinion as he did for the case of convicted felons Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.
Nicholas Corbett is on trial on second-degree murder charges in Cochise County Superior Court in Bisbee, Ariz., in connection with the shooting Jan. 12 of Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera, a 22-year old illegal immigrant from Mexico.
But in all fairness to Corsi, not that he deserves any, the allegations come from Brandon Judd, vice president of U.S. Border Patrol Union Local 2544, of which Nicholas Corbett is a member and who is picking up all legal expenses for the outlaw agent.
And the allegations? The Mexican Consulate is taking care of all the expenses of three Mexican witnesses to the shooting so they can remain in the U.S. to testify against Corbett.
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A murder trial tinged with international controversy that begins this week will determine whether a U.S. Border Patrol agent was justified in shooting an illegal immigrant near the Mexican border.
Jury selection will start Tuesday in federal court in the case of Agent Nicholas Corbett, who is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide in the Jan. 12, 2007, death of Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera.
Corbett’s lawyers contend that he acted lawfully in self-defense after being threatened; prosecutors contend the shooting wasn’t justified.
The case stands in contrast to that of El Paso, Texas, agents and convicted felons Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, who are serving prison terms after a jury convicted them in 2006 of assault, obstruction of justice and civil rights violations in the wounding of a drug smuggler.
Border Patrol brass in El Paso supported that prosecution, after an internal investigation determined the agents had acted inappropriately.
Robert Gilbert, who became chief of the El Paso sector a few months before the agents’ federal trial, said after the case that Ramos’ and Compean’s actions would not overshadow the agency’s “long-standing tradition of honor, service and integrity to the country.”
Now the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector chief, Gilbert has attended Corbett’s court proceedings in a show of support for the agent.
Corbett, 40, an agent since 2003, encountered Dominguez, 22, of Puebla, Mexico, his two brothers and one of the brother’s girlfriend as they tried to return to Mexico to evade capture.
Corbett cut off their exit with his SUV, then jumped out to take them into custody.
The witnesses told investigators and later testified at an August preliminary hearing that Francisco Dominguez had started kneeling when Corbett came up behind him, hit him on the side of his neck and pushed him downward. They said the gun was in Corbett’s left hand, draped over Dominguez’s left shoulder, and the weapon discharged.
Corbett declined to talk to investigators but told other Border Patrol agents, including a supervisor, that he had shot after Dominguez raised his arm to throw a rock at him.
The witnesses insisted Dominguez was shot from behind without provocation.
In deciding to bring charges last spring, prosecutors concluded that autopsy and forensic results supported the witnesses’ testimony, with the bullet fired between 3 inches and 2 1/2 feet from Dominguez.
The Arizona shooting created some stir on Web blogs but nothing approaching the intensity over the Texas case, which caused a furor among conservative lawmakers, on Internet blogs and talk radio, including calls for presidential pardons.
The Dominguez shooting elicited protests from Mexican President Felipe Calderon and a diplomatic note demanding an exhaustive investigation, as well as from human rights activists. Foes of illegal immigration counterattacked.
A Border Patrol agents’ union official leveled accusations of a tainted investigation, contending that Mexican consular officials received premature access to interview witnesses to the shooting before all had been interviewed by case investigators.
The consulate and the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department denied the charges.
“We’re prepared to present our evidence to the jury and we will live with whatever verdict they return. That’s all you can do in a case like this,” said prosecutor Ed Rheinheimer.
Picking a jury, he said, “will be very important to eliminate the possibility of having a juror who has an agenda from either side.”
“We’re ready for the trial,” added special prosecutor Grant Woods, a former Arizona attorney general. “We look forward to the jury hearing all the evidence in this case.”
Defense lawyers did not return phone several calls seeking comment.
The Border Action Network, a southern Arizona human rights organization, plans a weeklong memorial outside the federal courthouse “to demand policy changes to prevent further death and injustice along the border.”
“In terms of the bigger picture, we see this as another example of the fact that the current anti-immigrant climate and focus on stepped-up enforcement inevitably results in these types of abuses,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze (pronounced Metz), executive director of the ACLU of Arizona.
Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, whose members report illegal entries to the Border Patrol along sections of the Mexican border, said his group hopes “all law enforcement agents get a fair trial.”
“It’s a very unfortunate situation for this young man and certainly for the family who lost their loved one,” he said. “Hopefully, at least the Border Patrol union and the Border Patrol bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., are going to make sure that they provide the best defense that they can.”
Jurors would be allowed to convict on only one charge. Because a gun was used, the state also has alleged the dangerous nature of the offense, and a conviction would require mandatory prison time.
A second-degree murder conviction would draw a sentence of 10 to 22 years, manslaughter seven to 21 years and negligent homicide four to eight years.
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