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I recently posted this in the Extended Discussion forum, and I'm deciding to re-post it because I want your opinions.

Alright, anybody who watches America's Most Wanted, or has watched it recently, has heard of the Texas Three. These three men; Ignacio Ramos, Gilmer Hernandez, and Jose Compean.

"In February, 2005, Agents Compean and Ramos were chasing an illegal immigrant accused of smuggling drugs into our country. The man turned, and the agents believed they saw a gun in his hand so they opened fire. They appeared to have missed, since the guy kept running, jumped into the Rio Grande, then surfaced on the other side in Mexico, where he got into a car and sped off. He left behind one million dollars' worth of marijuana in an abandoned vehicle.....When the accused smuggler turned up a month later, claiming to have been wounded by the agents, Sutton prosecuted the lawmen on gun charges and for violating the man's civil rights, and persuaded a jury to convict them." They were, needless to say, jailed for doing their job. You can find the rest of this article here.
"And they're not the only ones. I recently learned about a young sheriff's deputy in Texas named Gilmer Hernandez, who opened fire in an attempt to stop an SUV that first ran a red light, then, in his opinion, tried to run him down. The SUV turned out to be full of illegal immigrants. One of them was hiding above the vehicle's wheel well, and was slightly injured." He was also prosecuted, and all three are still currently in jail.

http://msunderestimated.com/2007/02/19/the-texas-three-suttons-out-of-control-video/
Above you can see photos and videos of the Texas Three, and also see the opinion of "MsUnderestimated".

TOPIC
Do you think this is just?
Should the officers be the only ones to be punished?
What should their sentence be?
Other opinions you may have.

I agree, if it was necessary, we must trust our police, for if we don't trust our gaurdians, we have no faith, and thus, chaos.

I've provided a link to the article in my first post. ^^

The judge is not to be blamed, the laws that he must enforce are.

Anyways, this is a case of a law that protects us from certain extreme cases and hurts us in others. Here is the sad truth, if you ever shoot at anyone to protect yourself, kill them. Once they are dead, make sure it looks like your life was threatened. Sadly, that is what our laws have boiled down to.