US Attorney Sutton Resigns
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – The U.S. attorney who won the conviction of two Border Patrol agents for shooting of a fleeing drug dealer is resigning.
Johnny Sutton, the top federal prosecutor for 68 counties in Central and West Texas, notified President Barack Obama that he is resigning. He was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2001, so his decision to step down in the new Democratic administration is not surprising.
His last day in the U.S. attorney’s Western District office will be April 19. Sutton, 48, became a lightning rod for conservatives angry with his prosecution of agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean in the coverup of a shooting of the unarmed drug smuggler near El Paso. They were convicted of shooting at the fleeing smuggler and lying about it and were sentenced to prison.
The New Orleans-based U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict, and the Supreme Court refused to hear a further appeal. But Bush commuted the sentences in January, and both men were released from custody in February.
Sutton, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007, defended the prosecutions as the right thing to do. U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Sutton pushed for the commuted sentences. Smith said Sutton “did a good job overall as U.S. attorney.”
Texas’ two U.S. senators and congressional Democrats will now vet candidates to fill the job and for other vacant U.S. attorney positions in the state. The delegation will offer candidates to Obama, whose nominees will need Senate confirmation. Sutton was a prosecutor for eight years in the Harris County district attorney’s office before moving to Austin in 1995 as then-Gov. Bush’s criminal justice policy director.
He followed Bush to Washington, providing advice on U.S.-Mexico border issues in the Justice Department. He later returned to Texas one of the state’s four U.S. attorneys.
Sutton also was a University of Texas baseball star during the team’s 1983 national title run.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
