Bush praises appointee
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By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) – President George W. Bush Thursday praised the federal prosecutor who was grilled two days earlier by a Senate panel for his role in the conviction of two U.S. Border Patrol agents for the shooting a drug dealer.
Taking questions from members of the Nashville, Tenn., Chamber of Commerce after a speech, Bush declined to promise to pardon the two agents, as a growing number of lawmakers are urging.
“I’m not going to make that kind of promise in a forum like this,” Bush said. “Obviously I am interested in facts. I know the prosecutor very well, Johnny Sutton. He’s a dear friend of mine from Texas. He’s a fair guy. He is an even-handed guy.”
Sutton has a long association with the president. Between 1995 and 2000, he served as then Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s criminal justice policy director.Before he was appointed to the post of U.S. attorney, Sutton served as a policy coordinator in the Bush-Cheney transition team when the president was first elected.
Bush spoke for the first time in months regarding the controversial case of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, sentenced to 11 and 12 years respectively in federal prison for shooting a fleeing drug smuggler in the buttocks in February 2005 and then trying to cover up the shooting. Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, a Mexican national, was attempting to smuggle 743 pounds of marijuana into the country.
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