President Bush’s commutation of the sentences of two Texas Border Patrol agents who shot a fleeing Mexican drug smuggler in the buttocks and then tried to cover the incident up came after the agents’ congressional supporters tried to take the heat off former Bush aide Johnny Sutton, the US Attorney in San Antonio, World Net Daily reports. The 2005 prosecution outraged conservative commentators and even many Democrats, most prominently Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.
Tara Setmeyer, communications director to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), told Glenn Beck in a recent interview that the congressional supporters had abandoned their quest for pardons for the agents, urging the White House instead to commute their 12- and 11-year sentences. “[G]iven the politics of the situation, given the relationship between Sutton and the President, we know that a full pardon would be a full rebuke of Johnny Sutton … So we’ve abandoned the pardon effort,” Setmeyer said.
Sutton was then-Texas Gov. Bush’s criminal policy director from 1995 to 2000. Bush appointed Sutton the US Attorney for the Western District of Texas in 2001. The Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, have already served about two years in prison and will soon be free to go.
