Background

Johnny Sutton, who serves as the US Attorney for the Western District of Texas, was nominated by President Bush on October 25, 2001 and confirmed by the United States Senate on November 30, 2001.  His district is made up of three metropolitan areas -- San Antonio, El Paso and Austin -- and contains 660 miles of border with the Republic of Mexico.

Selected Chairman of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee in 2006, Sutton's jurisdiction in Western Texas encompasses Crawford, Texas -- home of Bush's beloved ranch, but his connection with G. W. Bush goes further back:

Prior to becoming United States Attorney, Mr. Sutton served as an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and as a Policy Coordinator for the Bush-Cheney Transition Team assigned to the Department of Justice.

Mr. Sutton served as the Criminal Justice Policy Director for then-Governor George W. Bush from 1995-2000, advising the Governor on all criminal justice issues, with specific oversight in the areas of criminal law, prison capacity and management, parole operations and legislative initiatives. source

Louis Padilla, ICE and the US Attorney's Office

Louis Padilla disappeared and it was eventually discovered he had run afoul of a drug smuggling operation...

The story turns on one extraordinary fact: playing a central role in the House of Death was a US government informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, known as Lalo, who was paid more than $220,000 (£110,000) by US law enforcement bodies to work as a spy inside the Juarez cartel.

    [snip]

Meanwhile the El Paso Ice office reported the matter to headquarters in Washington. The information went up the chain of command, eventually reaching America's Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John G. Malcolm. It passed through the office of Johnny Sutton, the US Attorney for Western Texas - a close associate of George W. Bush. When Bush was Texas governor, Sutton spent five years as his director of criminal justice policy. After Bush became President, Sutton became legal policy co-ordinator in the White House transition team, working with another Bush Texas colleague, Alberto Gonzalez, the present US Attorney General.

    [snip]

'Sutton could and should have shut down the case, there and then,' says Bill Weaver, a law professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has made a detailed study of the affair. 'He could have told Ice and the lawyers "go with what you have, and let's try to bring Santillan to justice". That neither he nor anyone else decided to take that action invites an obvious inference: that because the only people likely to get killed were Mexicans, they thought it didn't much matter.' source

In its report the Guardian stated that "The US media have virtually ignored this story. The Observer is the first newspaper to have spoken to Janet Padilla, and this is the first narrative account to appear in print." But the case was being covered by someone in the US Media... Bill Conroy of NarcoNews.  A week after the original article appeared, the editor of the Guardian attached a note. Here we have the beginning paragraph and then, showing a week later, there was an Editor's note attached to the article that appeared in the Guardian [see above link]:

    The following apology was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday December 10 2006

    The article below says 'the US media have virtually ignored this story', yet editing had removed a reference to narconews.com reporter Bill Conroy, who has reported it extensively. Apologies.

Bill Conroy represents another Sutton twist.  On July 25, 2005  US Representative Cynthia McKinney (Georgia) sent a letter to Michael Chertoff (Secretary of Homeland Security) and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales complaining about behavior of DHS and ICE agents in regards to Mr. Conroy.  The following is an except of the letter [full text here - or here.]:

On May 24, 2005, Agents Carlos Salazar and Steve White of ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility unit visited the San Antonio, Texas, workplace of journalist Bill Conroy in a very unprofessional attempt to intimidate Mr. Conroy into revealing sources of non-classified information and documents embarrassing to the Department and to the U.S. Attorney's office for the San Antonio, Texas, region. Agent Salazar, with another agent, additionally went to the home of Mr. Conroy and behaved in an intimidating manner toward the journalist's wife and children.

    More troubling, still, is that the agents attempted to intimidate his employer at a business newspaper that had nothing to do with Mr. Conroy's reports for the Internet newspaper Narco News.

    [snip]

    In particular, General Gonzales, I address this letter to you because many eyebrows have been raised here in Congress by the confluence of facts that demonstrate that Mr. Conroy, as a journalist, has reported a series of stories involving the "House of Death" case in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in which an undercover informant in the process of seeking to make a drug case for U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's office, allegedly committed numerous homicides while under the protection of that office.

    Since it is well known throughout Washington that federal agents do not, as a rule, visit journalists in attempts to discover sources without authorization from the U.S. Attorney with jurisdiction, the behavior of the agents is seen as an attempt by U.S. Attorney Sutton to intimidate a journalist who has reported facts that are embarrassing to him.

Bill Conroy had been following the Padilla story and reporting on it extensively.  Apparently, his was the only US news service that was reporting on the case and, as evidenced by the letter from Rep. McKinney, he was being threatened and harassed by federal agents.

Border prosecutions

The Case of Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila

Two Texas Border Patrol agents have begun serving prison sentences for the shooting of Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila.  It is believed that Aldrete-Davila was smuggling marijuana into the US at the time the incident occurred.  Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were accused of firing 15 shots at Aldrete-Davila. They were sentenced to 11 and 12 years respectively in January of 2007.  The incident is a public relations nightmare for Johnny Sutton and the US Attorney's office in Western Texas.

Opponents of the agents' imprisonment - who argue they should, at most, have received a suspension for not following procedure after firing a weapon - believe the case could create a chilling effect for Border Patrol agents who might decide it's easier to look the other way than to use deadly force to apprehend Mexican drug smugglers.

    But Sutton argues he had no choice.

    "You have to understand that we could not turn our backs on this," he told WND. "Two Border Patrol officers shot 15 times at an unarmed man who was running away and posed no real threat."

    [snip]

    Sutton told WND "there was no way we could prosecute" Aldrete-Davila.

    "Ramos and Compean could not identify him," he said. "We found no fingerprints on the van, and he managed to escape, even though he had been shot in the behind by the agents."

    source

Supporters of Ramos and Compean are lobbying for a presidential pardon and, according to a January 19, 2007 article, that is not out of the realm of possiblity.

WASHINGTON  --  President George W. Bush left open the possibility of a pardon for two U.S. Border Patrol agents serving federal prison sentences for shooting a Mexican drug dealer as he fled and covering up the crime.

Bush said "there's a process for pardons" and the case has to work its way through the system.



[snip]

Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, introduced a bill Thursday calling for a congressional pardon of the agents. Congress has never issued pardons to anyone convicted of a crime, said Joe Kasper, Hunter's spokesman. But Kasper said Hunter believes there is enough ambiguity in the law on pardons to give it a try.

[snip]

Texas Sen. John Cornyn said the Justice Department should have the chance to explain why the agents were prosecuted. Cornyn sent a letter to Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, asking for a hearing.

Deputy Sheriff Guillermo F. Hernandez

Another law enforcement official, [Texas] Edwards County Deputy Sheriff Guillermo F. Hernandez was found guilty of shooting and injuring a Mexican national who was being smuggled into the US.  Here is a recap from Jerry Seper of the Washington Times, from 2/2/2007:

A Texas deputy sheriff who fired shots at a fleeing vehicle after the driver tried to run him down faces 10 years in prison for injuring one of the passengers, a Mexican national being smuggled illegally into the United States.

    The U.S. attorney, who won lengthy prison terms last year for two U.S. Border Patrol agents in the shooting of a drug-smuggling suspect, also prosecuted Edwards County Deputy Sheriff Guillermo F. Hernandez, who is to be sentenced next month.

    The deputy's boss, Sheriff Donald G. Letsinger, said his officer - who had been on the job for a year - "followed the letter of the law" in defending himself in the April 2005 incident and questioned why the government brought charges.

Cross Border Jurisdiction -- More Border Lawyers

Johnny Sutton, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, doesn't hold back. "Fantastic news," he says about the U.S. Department of Justice's July 31 announcement that bolsters prosecutorial power along the border. The DOJ has authorized the hiring of 25 additional assistant U.S. attorneys to be split among five federal law enforcement districts along the border, including the Western and Southern districts of Texas. The DOJ says the new prosecutors, funded by a $2 million supplemental appropriation, will focus exclusively on immigration-related crimes -- such as alien smuggling, illegal re-entry into the United States, possession of firearms by illegal aliens, human trafficking and document fraud -- and drug traffickers smuggling illegal narcotics across the Southwest border. Sutton says he expects to receive a good share of the new hires, since his district prosecutes a high number of border-related felonies, including drug and alien smuggling cases. In the Western District, Sutton says, 117 AUSAs now prosecute cases. That roster includes 31 lawyers in El Paso, 21 of whom devote their time exclusively to immigration-related cases. U.S. Attorney Donald J. DeGabrielle Jr. of the Southern District of Texas could not be reached for comment before presstime on Aug. 3. Southern District spokesman John Yembrick declines comment.¹

Action requests either honored or not:

DeLay Campaign Finances, Judicial Watch and Johnny Sutton

Judicial Watch, a non-partisan advocacy group, filed a complaint against Texans for a Republican Majority [PAC founded by Tom DeLay].  It charged that DeLay's group "conducted illegal money laundering in 2002 to funnel corporate money to GOP candidates for the Texas House." The filing of the complaint brought them up against The American Conservative Union -- with Sutton's office in the middle of the controversy.

The American Conservative Union told U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of San Antonio that the 2002 campaign finance activities of DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority should not be subject to a criminal investigation.

"Your office should take no action . . . for the simple reason that the contributions were made legally and in accordance with the applicable state and federal law in effect during the 2002 election cycle," wrote David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union.

    [snip]

"It is unfortunate that a public official such as Mr. Earle would abuse the judicial process for purposes of political gain and newspaper headlines," Keene said in his letter to Sutton. "It is further discouraging that Judicial Watch would interject itself into this obviously partisan political witch hunt."

Russell Verney, Regional Director for Judicial Watch, was the one that filed the complaint.  When asked why, he replied, "It doesn't pass the smell test," and rejected the "common practice" defense.

"I understand that everybody in politics thinks the laws don't apply to political campaign funding. It may well be a common practice. That doesn't mean it isn't illegal," Verney said.

Verney said Sutton's office told him it is investigating the complaint. Sutton spokeswoman Shana Jones on Monday said she could not confirm whether a complaint had been filed or is being investigated.²

Johnny Sutton - Persecutor or Prosecutor?

What agenda does US Attorney Johnny Sutton serve?  Isn't his first obligation to the people of his district? Or is he perhaps paying homage to the White House and the self-described CEO of the Justice Department?

Footnotes

¹ Source Citation: "Inadmissible.(Department of Justice)." Texas Lawyer (August 7, 2006): NA. General Reference Center Gold. Thomson Gale. Milton Public Library. 3 Feb. 2007

² Houston Chronicle 04-27-2004 Feds asked to suspend PAC probe / Contributions legal, U.S. attorney is told Byline: R.G. RATCLIFFE, Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau Staff

Special thanks go out to Roxy317 and Aaron Barlow.