"It does seem to me like the government overreacted here," Judge E. Grady Jolly of the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals remarked Monday, according to The Associated Press. Grady is on a three-judge panel considering an appeal filed by two Border Patrol agents serving 11- and 12-year sentences for shooting at and wounding a drug smuggler fleeing across the border. The trial judge's decision to bar questions exploring the smuggler's other dealings, Judge Patrick Higginbotham opined, "strikes me as relevant."

No lie.

Finally, a ray of hope for Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. On Feb. 17, 2005, the two Border Patrol Agents shot at Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila as he ran toward the Texas-Mexico border after ditching a van containing 743 pounds of marijuana.

In 2006, a jury convicted the agents on charges of assault with a dangerous weapon, discharge of a firearm during a violent crime, obstructing justice, lying about the incident and willfully violating Aldrete's Fourth Amendment right to be free from illegal seizure. The jury apparently did not buy the agents' claim to have seen a shiny object -- which they feared was a gun -- in Aldrete's hand.

The big question is whether jurors would have ruled against Ramos and Compean if they had heard cross-examination likely to have punctured Aldrete's self-portrayal as a down-on-his-luck professional truck driver with a sick mom in need of a quick $1,000 to $1,500.

Ramos and Compean supporters have argued that Aldrete was no innocent. Their view was bolstered last month, when the feds arrested Aldrete on charges that he was running hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the border while he enjoyed a "humanitarian visa" -- issued at the feds' urging to facilitate U.S. doctors treating the gunshot wound in his buttocks.

Now, to believe the smuggler's story, you have to believe that Mexican drug kingpins just happened to hand more product to a man who had left 743 pounds of marijuana in Texas in 2005 -- as if cartels are big on second chances.

Even at trial, Aldrete testified that Border Patrol agent Rene Sanchez told him that he could file a lawsuit and helped him find the lawyer who represented Aldrete, who was suing the government for $5 million. He had motive to lie.

The Associated Press also reported that Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Stelmach admitted to the 5th Circuit that Aldrete had told "some lies" to investigators. Continued...