Will former border agents Ramos and Compean get a commutation?

Following up on this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining the prosecution and sentencing of former border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean (basics here), this Dallas Morning News article reviews the mounting calls for sentencing justice in the case.  Here is a snippet:

Senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked Mr. Bush to commute the 11- and 12-year sentences of agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean in a case that has become a flash point for groups campaigning against illegal immigration.  So far, the White House won’t say whether the agents can expect mercy of the sort Mr. Bush recently granted to former vice presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

“This penalty levied on these agents is excessive and … they deserve the immediate exercise of your executive clemency powers,” the senators wrote Mr. Bush, one day after Ms. Feinstein chaired a hearing at which senators grilled the Bush-appointed West Texas prosecutor who handled the case. “We believe that this is a case of prosecutorial overreaching, and to allow Agents Ramos and Compean to serve over a decade in prison would represent a serious miscarriage of justice.”

The full text of the letter that the Senators sent to the President can be found within this official press release.

Some prior posts about the Border Agents case:

• Bipartisan call for commuting border agent sentences
• Reports on Senate hearing on Border Agent case
• The furor over border agents’ long sentences
• Equal justice or just the realities of ratting out?
• Using the border agent case as a catalyst for federal sentencing reform
• Harsh border agent sentences producing half-truths