Prison for man who smuggled while a gov't witness

EL PASO — A man shot by a pair of Border Patrol agents during a drug smuggling attempt was sentenced to nearly a decade in prison Wednesday for separate smuggling incidents committed while he was waiting to testify against the agents.

Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, who was wounded in the buttocks while fleeing from an abandoned marijuana load in 2005, was sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison for his role in two other smuggling efforts later that same year.

His sentencing came a little more than a week after a federal appeals court upheld lengthy sentences for the two agents convicted in his shooting, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compeau. Several members of Congress have called on President Bush to commute the agents' sentences or pardon them.

Aldrete was shot in February 2005, and testified against the agents in their 2006 trial, telling jurors he was unarmed when he was shot as he ran toward Mexico after a brief scuffle with Compean. Ramos and Compean argued they believed Aldrete had a weapon.

Aldrete pleaded guilty in April to two counts of possession with the intent to distribute a controlled substance, and one count each of conspiracy to import a controlled substance and conspiracy to possess a controlled substance.

At the time of that later smuggling, Aldrete was cooperating with federal investigators in the case against the agents and had been granted permission to freely cross into the U.S. Investigators have not said if he used a border crossing card issued for those trips to enter Texas on the days of his admitted marijuana smuggling.

Before being sentenced Wednesday, Aldrete said he was not a career smuggler and asked for leniency.

"I don't do this for a living," Aldrete told U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in Spanish. "I did it again because I had to cover the debt" from the first failed smuggling attempt, and because his family had been threatened.

Cardone rejected his apologies, telling Aldrete that he squandered an opportunity to stay clean after being given immunity for the original smuggling effort in exchange for his testimony against Ramos and Compean.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld most of the agents' convictions but tossed out charges that the men tampered with an official proceeding. The ruling left intact each man's mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for discharge of a weapon in the commission of a crime of violence.

Back To Top