Jury Determines that ICE Agents are Liars

An ICE officer assaults a protestor and then claims that he was assaulted, "Your honor, he repeatedly struck my knuckles with his nose!"

It got caught on tape, and Brayan Ramos-Brito was acquitted of all charges stemming from his beating by immigration officers.

Funny, innit?

A Los Angeles protester charged with assaulting a border patrol agent in June was acquitted on Wednesday after US immigration officials were accused in court of lying about the incident.

The not guilty verdict for Brayan Ramos-Brito is a major setback for the Donald Trump-appointed US attorney in southern California and for Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who has become a key figure in Trump’s immigration crackdown. The 29-year-old defendant, who is a US citizen, was facing a misdemeanor and was the first protester to go to trial since demonstrations against immigration raids erupted in LA earlier this summer.

Border patrol and prosecutors alleged that Ramos-Brito struck an agent during a chaotic protest on 7 June in the south Los Angeles county city of Paramount outside a complex where the Department of Homeland Security has an office. But footage from a witness, which the Guardian published days after the incident, showed an agent forcefully shoving Ramos-Brito. The footage did not capture the demonstrator assaulting the officer.

The jury delivered its not guilty verdict after a little over an hour of deliberations, the Los Angeles Times reported. Bovino testified earlier in the day and faced a tough cross-examination from public defenders.

An hour?  Did the jury even make it to the deliberation room? 

Bovino was one of four border patrol agents who testified as witnesses, but was the only one to say he saw the alleged assault by Ramos-Brito, according to the LA Times. Videos played in court captured the agent shoving Ramos-Brito, sending him flying backward, and showed the protester marching back toward the agent, the paper reported. The videos did not capture Ramos-Brito’s alleged assault.

The fact that Gregory Bovino has a long history of disciplinary investigations and lying, and I am sure that his history did not help him with the jury.

Or maybe it was jury nullification.

Either works for me.