[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 98 (Monday, June 18, 2007)]
[House]
[Page H6633]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


            PROSECUTION OF FORMER U.S. BORDER PATROL AGENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, as the Members of this 
House well know, in February 2006, U.S. Border Patrol Agents Ramos and 
Compean were convicted in a U.S. District Court in Texas for shooting a 
Mexican drug smuggler. They were sentenced to 11 and 12 years 
imprisonment, respectively, and today is the 153rd day since the two 
agents entered Federal prison.
  What Members of this House may not know is that 10 years of each of 
their sentences were based on an indictment and conviction for a 
Federal crime that does not exist. The Federal crime they were 
convicted of does not exist.
  The law that they were charged with violating has never been enacted 
by the United States Congress but rather was fashioned by the Office of 
the United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas, Johnny 
Sutton.
  The law that the agents were charged with, 18 United States Code 
section 924(c)(1)(a) as enacted by Congress, requires a defendant to be 
indicted and convicted either of using or carrying a firearm during and 
in relation to the commission of a crime of violence or possessing a 
firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.
  However, neither Mr. Ramos nor Mr. Compean was ever charged with the 
specific elements of the crime. Instead, Mr. Sutton's office extracted 
from the United States Criminal Code a sentencing factor, discharging a 
firearm, and substituted that sentencing factor for the congressionally 
defined elements of the offense.
  In this case, I can imagine how difficult it would be to obtain an 
indictment and conviction for ``using,'' ``possessing'' or ``carrying'' 
a firearm when the Border Agents were required to carry firearms as 
part of their job. That difficulty may well, very well, explain why 
this United States Attorney's Office unilaterally changed Congress's 
definition of a crime to a definition that would be easier to prove by 
the prosecution.
  Any change in the elements of a crime amounts to the seizure of 
legislative authority by a Federal prosecutor. When this encroachment 
upon the legislative power of Congress was brought to my attention and 
to the attention of my colleagues, Congressmen Virgil Goode and former 
Texas State judge, Congressman Ted Poe, we joined forces with the Gun 
Owners Foundation, U.S. Border Control, U.S. Border Control Foundation 
and the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund to file a friend 
of the court brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth 
Circuit Court.
  The brief urges reversal of these unjust convictions and 10 year 
mandatory minimum sentences by spelling out how changes contained in 
two counts of the indictment against the agents are ``fatally 
defective'' because they fail to charge an offense as defined by the 
statute.
  Mr. Speaker, many of my colleagues and the American people have been 
greatly concerned about the denial of due process of law to Agents 
Ramos and Compean. The American people must be confident that 
prosecutors will not tailor the law to make it easier to convict in a 
particular case. Federal prosecutors take an oath to enforce the law, 
not to make the law.
  It is my understanding that the House Judiciary Committee will soon 
hold hearings to examine the prosecution of this case, and I want to 
thank Chairman John Conyers for his interest in investigating the 
injustice committed against these two Border agents.
  I encourage the chairman and the committee to take a thorough look 
into the actions of the Office of U.S. Attorney for the Western 
District of Texas and its pattern of aggressively prosecuting law 
enforcement officers, including Ramos and Compean, former Border Patrol 
Agent Aleman and Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez. These are legitimate 
legal questions and concerns about this prosecutor's office, and they 
need to be answered.
  And again, I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for his 
interest and concern about justice to right an injustice.

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