Patterico's Pontifications

2/14/2007

Border Patrol Transcripts — Volume I

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:06 am



I will try to post summaries of the Border Patrol Transcripts when I can. Ideally I’ll get DRJ to take it over.

VOLUME I is pretrial stuff: boring issues about scheduling the trial. There is an interesting tidbit on page 7, though. According to the prosecutor, addressing the judge, the drug smuggler/shooting victim Aldrete’s surgeons “have tried, but not been able, to reattach his urethra. He uses a catheter in his — outside of his body, going from his bladder into a bag, to urinate.”

I had been under the impression that he had simply been shot in the fleshy part of his bottom and suffered no real injury. That is apparently not true.

That’s why transcripts are nice.

P.S. Kanof keeps calling Aldrete “the defendant.” On page 10, she says: “The defendant, and I meant to say the victim.”

Heh.

P.P.S. DRJ, do you want to take this over?

10 Responses to “Border Patrol Transcripts — Volume I”

  1. Wow. That’s what I heard, too. No injury, ‘shot in the buttocks’. Like, in a lot of places, or maybe everywhere.

    F.. well, you know.

    David N. Scott (71b49c)

  2. Thanks for the confidence, Patterico. I want to look at this transcript but I probably can’t do it in depth until the weekend. I’m up against a hard deadline Friday with work commitments. However, I briefly browsed through parts of the transcript and noticed a few interesting things.

    If you are interested in BP pursuits, look at Vol XI pp 20-28 in which a supervisor discusses in detail the rules regarding when pursuits are allowed. The supervisor was fairly clear on what the rules mean but his subordinate is not as clear. The subordinate seems to view the rules on commencing and reporting pursuits as a judgment call and subject to interpretation (pp 45, 51-55, 102 and 128-133). The issue of BP pursuits must have bored the judge and perhaps the jury because the Court suggested defense counsel move on, using phrases like “pursuit ad nauseum,” “lost jury,” and stating the judge was “trying to stay awake” (pp 134-135).

    The DHS investigators were on the stand in Vol XII. This included a description of the “ruse” used to interview the BP officers (p 9), the official crime scene investigation (p 26), and Agent Compean’s lies (pp 33). Vol XII also has further discussion of Aldrete-Davila, his BP contact Sanchez, the issue of surrender, and more on the immunity issues. This appears to be a continuation of earlier testimony (this witness was recalled) and can be found at Vol XII, pp 51 et seq. It’s worth reading in full.

    I know this is spotty. I will try to look at it in order but I encourage others to jump in if you have more time than I do right now.

    DRJ (605076)

  3. Johnny Sutton, the U. S. Attorney that tried this case, is going after a deputy sheriff in a separate case that has some similarities –hernandez

    fmfnavydoc (78befa)

  4. Whoa. Just tried to read part of it.

    “Law & Order” is a lie.

    Slublog (c9fa35)

  5. The Hernandez case

    The facts as I’ve seen them as portrayed by resonably neutral parties – but these could be wrong by degrees:

    some time in the middle of the night Deputy Hernandez drove his girlfriend on a Firday night to a convienence store to buy a “soda” out of the vending machine:

    Hernandez Noticed a (I think it was a suburban) run a red light or stop sign (again transcripts)

    He apparently got his girlfriend – and pursued the car (WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND IN IT?)

    Pulled over the car was out of uniform, when he noticed the car was full of “sleeping people” he pulled his weapon and started yelling at the car.

    The car bolted he pumped 6 shots 4 hitting the car in the side and the rear.

    When the car crashed he noticed that one person did not run away

    She was bleeding from the face he called paramedics who them told him to stay put and called the Sheriff.

    The Sheriff, noticing the wounds and Hernandezs’ story called the Texas Rangers, they surveyed the scene, declared it a crime scene, called the ATF to investigate.

    The rest was a straight up prosecution.

    Now the deputy was tried practically in his home county and again was convicted like Ramos and Compean. His story and that of his girlfriends were NOT believed nor did they fit the crime scene forensics and bullet patterns in the car.

    The Red Rock paper tried to say that it was fragments from richochets off the tires that had miraculously penetrated the back door of the suburban and wounded the unarmed women in the face

    Deputy Gilmer said he feared for his life cause the car almost ran over his foot when it took off

    Interesting side note – his patrol camera worked all day until that one stop…..

    But hey, it makes a good story and now people are not believing US attorney, federal Judges and jurys, they are all in a conspiracy to let in illegal aliens and to smuggle drugs

    And the saga keeps on keepin on

    EricPWJohnson (405d78)

  6. Here is a Washpo story on it:

    http://www.washtimes.com/national/20070202-124744-1388r_page2.htm

    Noting that prosecutors offered the deputy probation in exchange for a guilty plea, the sheriff said, “This young man didn’t do anything wrong and wasn’t about to say he had. I think that speaks to his character.”

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Baumann, who prosecuted the case, told reporters that the law does not give law-enforcement officers the right to use “deadly force to stop a car unless it poses an imminent threat to the officer or another person. If the car is going away from you, it’s not even a close call.”

    EricPWJohnson (405d78)

  7. San Antonio Newspaper reports more info – again – neutral source

    http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA121606.01A.free_gilmer.2f35f8b.html

    At the trial, however, prosecutors sought to prove Hernandez had fired as many as six times at a fleeing car that posed no danger to him, and also may have manipulated evidence.

    His police unit’s video recorder, which should have automatically captured the entire encounter, held nothing useful, possibly because the tape already was full

    EricPWJohnson (405d78)

  8. From this: “the bullet entered Aldrete-Davila’s left buttock from the left side, traversed his groin, damaged the urethra, hitting bone in the process, and lodged in his right thigh. The bullet was extracted from Aldrete-Davila’s right groin and he received reconstructive surgery for the damage done to his groin and urethra and a catheter was reinserted.”

    And, this has more on the involvement of Bush’s buddies to the south.

    TLB (cc42f6)

  9. Well, here’s a comment from the Nativist, Zenophobic fringe:
    Fire the US Attorney;
    Call up the un-organized militia;
    Post the border:
    NO TRESSPASSING!
    Violators will be shot!
    Survivors will be prosecuted!

    But, if we could control the border here, we should be able to do the same in Iraq too.
    We have entered into sad days.

    Another Drew (8018ee)

  10. […] smuggler deserves whatever happens to him — even if that means being shot, and having his urethra damaged by the bullet, so that he has to pee through a catheter. Too bad! He’s a drug smuggler! FREE RAMOS AND […]

    Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: Johnny Sutton on Hannity & Colmes (d4224a)


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