The Morning Blend
Welcome
Complete Media Kit
TUCSON — A murder trial tinged with international controversy that begins this week will determine whether a U.S. Border Patrol agent was justified in shooting an illegal immigrant near the Mexican border.
Jury selection will start Tuesday in federal court in the case of Agent Nicholas Corbett, who is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide in the Jan. 12, 2007, death of Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera.
Corbett’s lawyers contend that he acted lawfully in self-defense after being threatened; prosecutors contend the shooting wasn’t justified.
The case stands in contrast to that of El Paso, Texas, agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, who are serving prison terms after a jury convicted them in 2006 of assault, obstruction of justice and civil rights violations in the wounding of a drug smuggler.
|
|
Border Patrol brass in El Paso supported that prosecution, after an internal investigation determined the agents had acted inappropriately. Robert Gilbert, who became chief of the El Paso sector a few months before the agents’ federal trial, said after the case that Ramos’ and Compean’s actions would not overshadow the agency’s “long-standing tradition of honor, service and integrity to the country.”
Now the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector chief, Gilbert has attended Corbett’s court proceedings in a show of support for the agent.
The Arizona shooting created some stir on Web blogs but nothing approaching the intensity over the Texas case, which caused a furor among conservative lawmakers, on Internet blogs and talk radio, including calls for presidential pardons.
The Dominguez shooting elicited protests from Mexican President Felipe Calderon and a diplomatic note demanding an exhaustive investigation, as well as from human rights activists. Foes of illegal immigration counterattacked.
A Border Patrol agents’ union official leveled accusations of a tainted investigation, contending that Mexican consular officials received premature access to interview witnesses to the shooting before all had been interviewed by case investigators. The consulate and the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department denied the charges.
“We’re prepared to present our evidence to the jury and we will live with whatever verdict they return. That’s all you can do in a case like this,” said Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer.
Picking a jury, he said, “will be very important to eliminate the possibility of having a juror who has an agenda from either side.”
“We’re ready for the trial,” added special prosecutor Grant Woods, a former Arizona attorney general. “We look forward to the jury hearing all the evidence in this case.”
Defense lawyers did not return phone several calls seeking comment.
The Border Action Network, a Southern Arizona human rights organization, plans a weeklong memorial outside the federal courthouse “to demand policy changes to prevent further death and injustice along the border.”
“In terms of the bigger picture, we see this as another example of the fact that the current anti-immigrant climate and focus on stepped-up enforcement inevitably results in these types of abuses,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona.
Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, whose members report illegal entries to the Border Patrol along sections of the Mexican border, said his group hopes “all law enforcement agents get a fair trial.”
“It’s a very unfortunate situation for this young man and certainly for the family who lost their loved one,” he said. “Hopefully, at least the Border Patrol union and the Border Patrol bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., are going to make sure that they provide the best defense that they can.”
leo friend wrote on Mar 2, 2008 12:35 PM:
I find it completely repulsive and inapropriate that you are using this very distressing time in the abused Agent's life in order to further your political ideas. Shame on you. This not about you and your whacked-out, fear-driven socio-political ideas, this is about a good agent who may end up wrongfully convicted of murder for doing his job and deffending his own life. Shame on YOU!!!! "