JUSTICE SERVED AND JUSTICE DENIED

Sometimes news about justice is good, at other times it's bad. Here are a couple of the most recent examples of justice served and justice denied.

(1) Presidential Pardons: Former President George W. Bush issued fewer pardons than most of his predecessors. He issued only 189 pardons and 11 commutations. On his last full day in office, Bush commuted the prison sentences of former Border Patrol officers Jose Compean (12 years) and Ignacio Ramos (11 Years) to time served (about 2 years).

The commutations for Compean and Ramos served the interests of justice. In 2005, they had intercepted a Mexican drug smuggler near El Paso and shot him in the ass as he fled back toward Mexico. After it appeared he had been unarmed, the officers tried to cover up the shooting by removing evidence from the scene, failing to report the incident to their superiors and falsifying their written reports. While waiting to testify aganst Compean and Ramos, their "victim" was arrested for sumggling in a large amount of marijuana.

Compean and Ramos were tried and convicted by a jury. The problem with this case is that the officers received those 12 and 11-year sentences because of a federal sentence enhancement (enacted by Congress in 1986) which mandates an additonal 10 years of prison time for a federal crime committed with a firearm.

As Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, has noted, the federal firearms sentence enhancement was "designed to deal with criminals who carry firearms in the commisssion of felonies and crimes of violence," but was applied to law enforcement officers who "came to work with no criminal intent, no mind set to commit any crime."

Law enforcement and anti-immigration groups were pleased with the commutation, although they had preferred that Compean and Ramos be granted a full pardon. Pro-immigration and civil rights groups were up in arms over the commutations, claiming they would send a message to officers that they had a green light to shoot unarmed illegal immigrants.

Former President Bush should be commended for issuing the commutations. Compean and Ramos remain convicted for their unlawful cover-ups but will not have to serve unreasonably excessive sentences for the use of firearms in the performance of their duties. JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED.

(2) In 1993, 18-year-old Gaylon Walbey, Jr. murdered Marionette Beyah, a college instructor, during the commission of a burglary at her Galveston, Texas home. He confessed to stabbing her 12 times in the neck and back, hitting her nine times in the head with a fire extinguisher and strangling her with an electrical cord. Walbey, now 34, was sentenced to death and has been on death row since 1994.

Now a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered a new punishment hearing for Walbey because his defense attorney at the time failed to properly investigate that killer's troubled childhood. The three judges held that had the jury been presented with facts about Walbey's mistreatment during childhood, he might not have been sentenced to death.

Come on, give me a break. Why should anyone give a rat's ass about the troubled childhood of this merciless and vicious killer? This decision comes on the heels of another ruling by the same appellate court that a WHITE death row inmate must receive a new trial after 30 years because the prosecution excluded blacks from serving on his jury. (Refer to my blog, "Justice Gone Beserk," 1-16-09.) JUSTICE HAS BEEN DENIED.

In a case where JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED and served well, the International Court of Justice (World Court) has now ruled that the United States violated the court's order when Texas went ahead with the execution of Mexican national Jose Ernesto Medellin Rojas for the brutal rape and murders of two teenaged Houston girls. (Refer to my blog, "Hallelujah, Justice Has Finally Been Served," 8-6-08.)

The World Court, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands, had ordered last year that 51 Mexican citizens, Medellin among them, who had been sentenced to death in the United States must have their sentences stayed. The World Court ruled they had been denied the assistance of the Mexican consulate as required by the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (a treaty signed by the U.S.) because police officers had failed to advise them of that right. The court ruled that the cases had to be reviewd before any of the 51 Mexicans could be executed.

As I have said in previous blogs, the World Court should stop meddling in our internal affairs and confine itself to international border disputes, war crimes, genocide and other good stuff like that. So, once again I say to the World Court, butt out of America's criminal justice system and, above all, don't mess with Texas!

PLEASE NOTE: Blogger El Pato commented: "It appears you have given some sort of consent to the (Border Patrol) shooting incident and failure to report the incident." Let me assure El Pato, and any other readers who may think likewise, that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES will I ever condone the improper removal of evidence, the failure to report a shooting incident and the falsifying of reports. As for the shooting itself, I am not about to condemn Compean and Ramos for shooting a drug smuggler fleeing back to Mexico.