{"id":287,"date":"2007-06-14T20:48:30","date_gmt":"2007-06-15T02:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=287"},"modified":"2007-06-14T20:49:09","modified_gmt":"2007-06-15T02:49:09","slug":"ramos-compean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=287","title":{"rendered":"Ramos-Compean"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The story of the two &#8220;wronged&#8221; border patrol agents is still circulating in conservative circles.  Read the statement from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usdoj.gov\/usao\/txw\/press_releases\/Compean-Ramos\/Setting%20the%20Record%20Straight%204-25%202007.pdf\">US Attorney<\/a> who prosecuted them (warning: PDF). It deals with a lot of shibboleths being spread by the Right.<\/p>\n<p>One thing I will comment on: reading between the lines, I think Johnny Sutton thinks the 10+ year sentences were excessive as well.  But a Clinton-era law puts in a mandatory 10-year sentence for using a firearm to commit a felony.  So he had no choice.<\/p>\n<p>I hate mandatory sentences in general and this business of tacking on extra years because a gun was used violates the right of due process.  These men were given an extra ten years for a crime the jury never convicted of.  And we have seen this guideline abused over and over again &#8212; in Texas, against the Branch Davidians, for example.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps if conservatives focused their energy away from the prosecutor and onto the unconstitutional insanity of 10-year sentence mandates, we&#8217;d make more progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The story of the two &#8220;wronged&#8221; border patrol agents is still circulating in conservative circles. Read the statement from the US Attorney who prosecuted them (warning: PDF). It deals with a lot of shibboleths being spread by the Right. One thing I will comment on: reading between the lines, I think Johnny Sutton thinks the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=287\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ramos-Compean<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law-and-order","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BzKF-4D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}