Judge's House of Death ruling reveals the truth of the drug war

[Joanne98]

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/8/25/164116/050

Judge's House of Death ruling reveals the truth of the drug war
By Bill Conroy,
Posted on Sat Aug 25th, 2007 at 04:41:16 PM EST

The U.S. government must surely be greasing up its spin machine in the wake of a federal judge’s recent ruling in a lawsuit filed by the families of the House of Death murder victims.
“We did nothing wrong, see,” will almost certainly be the message pumped out by the U.S. government to anyone in the media who seeks to avoid complexity or rocking the boat and is not averse to presenting talking points as news.

In fact, it would not be surprising for the government agents at the center of the House of Death controversy to now proclaim their innocence and decry their victimization and actively seek the spotlight — maybe even in the hope of cashing in on the House of Death bloodshed via book contracts and movie deals.

That is how the game is played in America.



But those of you who have been following the House of Death story on Narco News, by now, know this story is far to deep to be reduced to simple sound bytes. And for those of you who are new to this story, and care to read on, that reality will soon become apparent.
The families of the House of Death murder victims filed their lawsuit in December 2005 in federal court in El Paso, Texas. They accused the government and certain of its agents of constitutional violations and negligence stemming from actions, or lack of actions, which resulted in their loved ones being tortured, murdered and buried in the backyard of a house in Juarez, Mexico.

The federal judge in the case, Frank Montalvo, essentially adopted the government’s arguments in the House of Death case wholesale in issuing his ruling earlier this week.

He dismissed the families claims against the United States government as well as the claims against individual government agents, including Assistant U.S. Attorney Juanita Fielden and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) supervisors Giovanni Gaudioso, Patricia Kramer, Curtis Compton and ICE agent Raul Bencomo.

Judge Montalvo ruled, in essence, that the families could not establish legal claims under federal and state of Texas negligence statutes because either those laws didn’t apply to the murder victims since the crimes occurred in Mexico, or, in the alternative, because the government owed no duty to protect the victims from the acts of third parties — such as the Juarez-based narco-trafficking cell that operated the House of Death.

From the judge’s Aug. 20 ruling:


Pursuant to the FTCA , there is no subject matter jurisdiction for claims “based on the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty on the part of a federal agency or employee of the Government….”
The judge also dismissed the claims against the individual ICE agents and U.S. prosecutor because he determined that the families had failed to establish a proper claim that their constitutional rights, or those of the murder victims, had been violated.

Montalvo points out in his ruling, that "public officials (such as ICE agents and U.S. prosecutors) are entitled to “qualified immunity” for their actions on the job unless they violate “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which reasonable individuals would be aware.”

“None of Plaintiffs’ allegations, even if true, sufficiently establish constitutional liability on the part of any of the individual Defendants ,” Montalvo states in his ruling.

It is key here to note that Montalvo comes to his conclusions in this case even in light of assuming all of the families allegations are “true.” This is a quite amazing revelation about the nature of our law with respect to murder.

Hired Killer

The major allegation in this case, which is supported by the government’s own documents, is that an informant (Guillermo Ramirez Peyro) who was on the payroll of ICE (paid some $200,000 for his service) assisted, and in some cases participated, in the murders of about a dozen people at the House of Death in Juarez, Mexico, between August 2003 and mid-January 2004.

The families’ lawyer also alleges (and immigration court testimony by the informant himself supports this) that ICE agents were made aware of these murders, sometimes in advance of the killings, yet continued to send the informant back to the House of Death time and time again over the course of five months — after receiving approvals from high-level officials at ICE headquarters as well as from the Department of Justice.

From the informant’s under-oath testimony in U.S. Immigration Court — where he is currently fighting deportation:



Government attorney: Did you tell your — the ICE officers that you were aware that Mr. Santillan had ordered the deaths of people associated with the cartel ?
Ramirez Peyro: Yes.

Government attorney: Did you tell them before, right before it happened?

Ramirez Peyro: Yeah, several occasions. For example, in one occasion in Chicago, and Santillan talks to me, so I could send the boy there to open the house and me being in Chicago with the agents from ICE, and they knew because I authorize for them to hear my phone conversations. And besides that, I told them what’s going on, and in El Paso they were listening my phone calls.

The whole bloody affair came to an abrupt end when the killers — Mexican cops on Santillan’s payroll — nearly assassinated a DEA agent and his family. At that point, ICE officials and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Antonio chose to finally arrest Santillan and pull their informant, himself a former Mexican cop, out of the field.

So, even granting that all of this is true, Judge Montalvo still determined that the families’ case has to be dismissed because the ICE agents and the U.S. prosecutor overseeing the case committed no foul under existing law.

In other words, even though the government employed the killer, and knew he was committing murder, neither the government nor its agents bear any liability for the deaths of the victims. The fault, according to the judge’s interpretation of the law, falls completely on another party: those nasty drug war villains, the narco-traffickers.

From the judge’s ruling:


The record reflects the often-cited carne asadas were gruesome murder “parties” conducted by vicious men and women.
Considering the record as a whole, this Court concludes that, with or without Ramirez’s involvement, this is how these types of groups operate.

… Even assuming the Defendants had foreknowledge of the murders occurring in Mexico, the Court concludes the only arguable duty, if any, on their part would have been to notify Mexican law enforcement.

However, the Court concludes the evidence fails to show how any of the Defendants played a part in creating the circumstances leading to the murders or did anything to render the Plaintiffs more vulnerable to such circumstances.

ICE officials did, in fact, inform the Mexican government of the first House of Death murder, but claimed their informant had only “witnessed” a murder in Juarez — when he, in fact, supervised and participated in that murder. So it is clear from that written communication from ICE to Mexican federal officials that the truth in this case was being concealed from the Mexican government.

ICE officials in El Paso also informed DEA’s Juarez office about the first “murder incident” at the House of Death, but ICE did not provide DEA with sufficient information to identify the location of the house. In addition, ICE officials in El Paso refused to allow the informant to assist DEA with locating the house because they claimed it would jeopardize the safety of their informant.

Had the DEA been furnished with the location of the House of Death and if the Mexican government had been made aware that the informant participated in the first murder, could it not be argued that actions might have been taken by DEA or the Mexican government to prevent future murders at the House of Death, or does that not matter?

Apparently not, according to Judge Montalvo’s interpretation of the law. It appears there’s nothing wrong, continued>
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/8/25/164116/050

[Mythsaje]

1. The War On (some) Drugs is a continual crime perpetrated against the American People...

And there are far too few of our alleged leaders speaking out about it.