The Ramos and Compean Commutation And Mandatory Minimums

Outside of conservative talk radio, Lou Dobbs and Fox News, the media has given little coverage to the crimes committed by two Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. So they've scrambled to get the details on the story today, as President Bush commuted their sentences. Rep. Roy Blunt issued a statement "on the pardon" of the two -- but a pardon it was not. The White House gave lip service to the idea that the two ought to have been punished; the sentence apparently was not commensurate with the crime. It's a common complaint, so why did President Bush weigh in here?  Enormous pressure from conservatives ensured that the file would end up on his desk, although it's not clear whether the Justice Department had made a recommendation.

The facts of the case are pretty clear, much more clear one might expect.  The two agents shot a fleeing Mexican drug smuggler in the butt and tried to cover it up.  They did not know, at the time of the shooting, that the smuggler was a drug smuggler; all they knew is that he was a guy driving a van who, when pulled over, tried to run away from them.

It's an axiom of our judicial culture now that when the police do bad things with the power we give them, they deserve harsher punishment.

Shortly after the inductment, the case because a cause célèbre for conservatives and anti-immigrant forces -- and also for non-conservatives who consider themselves tough on crime.  The Associated Press account of the commutations does not really say why this case drew so much attention; the outrages Ramos and Compean supporters found were these: that the case chills the law enforcement zeal of our Border Patrol because it makes them less likely to draw weapons, even to defend themselves, and because the American system of justice is set up to treat federal agents less fairly than illegal immigrants (as Dobbs once asked of his viewers: "Do you believe the Justice Department should be giving immunity to illegal alien drug smugglers in order to prosecute U.S. Border Patrol agents for breaking administrative regulations? ... Yes or no."); that, in the substance of an encounter between an agent and an illegal -- a drug dealer, no less -- prosecutors were quick to jump on the wrongdoing of the government, rather than trying to solve the problem that created the situation in the first place: namely, drug dealers treating a porous Mexican-American border like a colander.
Ramos and Compean are Hispanic, as are many border patrol agents in largely Hispanic areas of Southwest Texas and California, which adds a layer of complexity for those who want the see the case as another example of the reflexive, life-devaluing xenophobia of anti-immigrant activists. Of course, since cultural difference is (one of the many factors that are ) at the heart of the immigration debate,  it may well have given some anti-immigrant forces an extra measure of pride to be able to publicly proclaim their support for Hispanics -- these Hispanics, Good Hispanics, Christians, Family Men -- as opposed to the stereotypical rootless Mexican who crosses the border.

In any event, the real culprit here isn't the judicial system -- it's Congress. They passed mandatory minimum sentencing laws that spell out long prison sentences for folks convicted of unlawfully discharging firearms. And liberals, not conservatives, tend to oppose them.