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Ariz. border agent charged with murder
By Arthur H. Rotstein
Associated Press
TUCSON, Ariz. — A Border Patrol agent fatally shot a “peaceful and passive” illegal immigrant without provocation as he tried to surrender, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday during opening statements of the agent’s retrial.
Nicholas Corbett is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide in the death of Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera, of Puebla, Mexico. Jurors can convict on only one charge.
Corbett’s first trial ended in a mistrial in March because of a hung jury. The case is unusual because it involves state criminal charges but is being tried in federal court because Corbett is a federal law enforcement agent.
At least five times during opening statements, special prosecutor Grant Woods alluded to the peaceful nature of Dominguez, who was killed about 100 yards north of the Mexican border.
Dominguez “was not hotheaded,” said Woods, a former Arizona attorney general. He said Corbett had lied in alleging that Dominguez threatened to smash his head with a rock, as well as in his explanation of the confrontation and how the shooting occurred.
Woods said Wednesday that he hoped to show Dominguez’s good character through witnesses, including a woman who had employed him near New York City.
Woods said Wednesday that Dominguez, his two brothers and a brother’s girlfriend had crossed into Arizona on Jan. 12, 2007, but decided to return to Mexico because of bad weather and a number of nearby patrol agents. They were near the border when they saw Corbett’s vehicle heading toward them.
“They didn’t run; they didn’t hide,” Woods said. “They figured they would be apprehended.”
He said the brothers and girlfriend will testify that all four were surrendering when Corbett hit Dominguez in the back of the head and was pushing him down from behind with the gun in his left hand when the weapon fired.
Woods said an autopsy showed the bullet entered under Dominguez’s left armpit, “blowing out the entire lower part of his heart.”
But defense attorney Sean Chapman said Corbett defended himself with deadly force, as state law allows.
“The evidence will show that Francisco Dominguez was not a peaceful man,” Chapman said, “that he had a rock the size of a baseball or softball, and tried to smash it into the head of a federal law enforcement officer.”
He also called the prosecution’s three witnesses “absolute liars” and suggested the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office conducted an incompetent investigation. He said investigators didn’t find a pair of gloves that Dominguez had been wearing until a year later at the crime scene and that they didn’t test for gunshot residue on Corbett’s hands, among other claims.
Chapman said his client was “accused falsely of a crime he did not commit. He is innocent.”
Conviction on the second-degree murder charge could bring a sentence of 10 to 22 years in prison. The manslaughter charge carries a possible seven to 21 years sentence, and negligent homicide four to eight years.