Legal Brief Says Border Agents Were Charged With ‘Non-Existent Crime’

Carolyn Hileman | July 27, 2007 

Cybercast News Service obtained a copy of an amicus curiae (”friend of the court”) legal brief filed by Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Virgil Goode (R-Va.), and Ted Poe (R-Texas) in the former agents’ appeal before the Fifth Circuit Court in New Orleans. They accuse the prosecution of “creating a purported criminal offense never enacted into law by Congress,” and of charging Ramos and Compean with a “non-existent crime.” Simply discharging a firearm near a violent crime is not illegal, the brief argued, saying the law they were convicted under is not a law at all, but a sentencing factor used to help a jury determine jail time after a conviction. The brief cited several cases as precedent, including United States v. Barton in which the Fifth Circuit Court ruled that “discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence” could be used only as a sentencing factor, not as an element of a conviction.

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