Posted: 4/23/2007 4:30:00 PM EDT
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070423/ap_on_re_us/border_patrol_shooting;_ylt=AhknKjYePfwNYTMew_rB1PdvzwcF PHOENIX - A Border Patrol agent was charged Monday with first-degree murder in the shooting of an illegal immigrant at the border in January. An investigation found that Agent Nicholas Corbett's killing of Francisco Dominguez-Rivera, of Puebla, Mexico, was not legally justified, said Cochise County prosecutor Ed Rheinheimer. Corbett is also charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide. Corbett's attorney, Daniel Santander, didn't immediately return a message left Monday afternoon by The Associated Press. The shooting, which drew condemnation from the Mexican government, occurred while Corbett was trying to apprehend Dominguez-Rivera and three others who were trying to enter the country illegally. |
They let the three witnesses stay together and get their stories straight???? Is that common????  Records contradict agent's story on entrant's slaying ON JAN. 12, a Border Patrol agent fatally shot Francisco Javier Domínguez-Rivera, an illegal entrant. ONE DAY LATER, the agency's initial report said a struggle had preceded the shooting. TEN WEEKS LATER, Cochise County officials said their findings didn't match the agent's account. Brady McCombs Arizona Daily Star Tucson, Arizona 03.27.2007 http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/175511 A U.S. Border Patrol agent's account of what led him to shoot and kill an unarmed illegal entrant in January doesn't match witness testimony or forensic evidence, records released Monday by the Cochise County Attorney's Office show. The documents and the autopsy report appear to support the statements of three witnesses who were being apprehended along with Francisco Javier Domínguez-Rivera, 22, of Puebla, Mexico, when he was shot. The trio — two brothers and a sister-in-law of Dominguez-Rivera — told investigators that the agent, Nicholas Corbett, 39, had a gun in his right hand when he drove up to them in a Border Patrol vehicle on the afternoon of Jan. 12 about 150 yards north of the border between Bisbee and Douglas. The witnesses said the agent ordered them to lie on ground and had switched the gun from his right to his left hand as he pushed Domínguez-Rivera to the ground. That is when they said the gun fired. Corbett has not spoken with investigators, but he reportedly told colleagues on the day of the shooting that he was in pursuit of three members of a larger group of illegal border crossers and had moved to intercept them in his vehicle. He got out of the vehicle with his gun drawn and saw a man at the rear of his vehicle with a rock in his hand. Corbett said that when the man made a motion as if he were about to throw the rock, he raised his gun and fired a single round. In the days that followed the incident, the Border Patrol said a scuffle had led to the shooting and the agent "feared for his life." An official with the Arizona Chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for agents, said Corbett committed no wrongdoing, and he criticized the investigation. Report: Bullet entered heart The bullet that killed Domínguez-Rivera entered the left side of his chest, passed through his heart and liver, and settled in his right lower abdomen, a couple of inches to the right of his navel, according to an autopsy report by the Cochise County Medical Examiner's Office. The report was released with hundreds of other pages of documents related to the shooting investigation. Domínguez-Rivera was shot from between 3 inches and 2 1/2 feet away, according to Arizona Department of Public Safety lab information included in the report. Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer said he had not yet decided whether the agent would face charges, noting that the decision will not be made until he's had a chance to review a video of the incident captured by a Border Patrol surveillance camera. The digital video on compact disc is in the hands of the FBI, he said, where it is undergoing "video enhancement." Corbett has returned to full active duty according to agency protocol and will continue working pending the results of the investigation, said Gustavo Soto, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman. Union VP: Probe was bungled The investigation was mishandled from the beginning, when investigators failed to separate the three witnesses and allowed Mexican Consulate officials to speak to them before they were interviewed, said Brandon Judd, vice president of the agents' union, Local 2544. That explains the matching stories from the three witnesses, Judd said. In addition, Cochise Cochise County Sheriff's Office investigators never tried to talk directly with Corbett, Judd said. Investigators were informed that Corbett would not speak to them without an attorney, the documents show. It's not clear, however, whether any further attempts were made to speak to him or his attorney. Corbett's lawyer, Daniel Santander, could not be reached for comment Monday. Judd said he believes the forensic evidence is inconclusive. Evidence that the bullet followed a downward trajectory doesn't mean Corbett's account is false, he said. The agent could have been above the man when the shots were fired, Judd said. "As far as what we know, forensics would support the alien being in a position to throw a rock," Judd said. The Cochise County Sheriff's Office and the Mexican Consulate have denied the accusations that consulate officials spoke with witnesses before law enforcement authorities did. The documents released Monday said investigators spoke to the witnesses before anybody else. "Assertive in your arrests" Agents are authorized to use their firearms at any time they feel threatened, as long as the person they are shooting at has the "means, opportunity and intent" to harm the agent or some other innocent person, Soto said. "You are taught to have to be more assertive in your arrests," Soto said about training at the academy for agents. "But when an agent decides to use his weapon is on each agent." Local immigrant-rights activists questioned the propriety of use of force in this situation and in general by agents. (This situation? You mean with a LEO capturing 5+ CRIMINALS???) The fact that Corbett was back in the field with his firearm seems incomprehensible, said Mark Adams, the coordinator of Douglas-based Frontera de Cristo, a Presbyterian ministry. Adams is a longtime immigrant-rights activist. Continued impunity for agents who use their firearms has created a climate in which they believe they can fire without consequence, said Isabel Garcia, co-chair of Coalición de Derechos Humanos, a Tucson-based immigrant-rights group. "They are supposed to be trained to defuse a situation, and more and more we find in the Border Patrol agency it's one of escalation instead of defusion," she said. The slain man's father, Renato Domínguez, said he was not surprised by the conflicting accounts of his son's death. "Obviously each one has its own version, but I saw my son's body, and I know how he was shot. He was murdered," Renato Domínguez said Monday from his home in Cuautla, Morelos, Mexico. Domínguez, who is angry and frustrated with what he calls a slow response from officials and the fact that a trial has not begun, said the agent should be punished according to Mexico's laws. "Why take someone's life? Just because a crazy guy brings a gun, feels powerful and wants to make a Mexican feel less," Dominguez said. "That's what this person was thinking." Domínguez-Rivera, who had been a construction worker in Mexico, was trying to cross into the United States illegally with a group that included his two brothers, René Domínguez-Rivera and Jorge Domínguez-Rivera; and his sister-in-law, Sandra Vidal Guzmán. He had been living in New York before returning to Mexico in December, his brother told investigators. His brothers and sister-in-law are in the custody of the Mexican Consulate in Tucson and have to check in three times a week with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Juan Manuel Calderón Jaimes, the general consul in Tucson. Mexican government waiting The Mexican government, which condemned the killing and demanded a full investigation, won't comment until the U.S. government makes the results official, said Jessica López Mejía, spokeswoman for the Mexican Office of Foreign Affairs. There is no timetable on a decision on charges, said Rheinheimer, the county attorney. In a high-profile case such as this with conflicting accounts and complex details, Rheinheimer is likely to send the results before a grand jury, composed of a citizens, or a preliminary hearing in front of a state judge to determine charges, said professor Gabriel "Jack" Chin of the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law. The charges could range from nothing to differing degrees of homicide, he said. "At this stage of the game, it's really wide open," said Chin, who spoke in general terms and has no connection to the case. On StarNet: Find past stories on this topic and other border-related news at azstarnet.com/border ● Star reporters Ignacio Ibarra and Mariana Alvarado Avalos contributed to this story. |