The Border Patrol has either lost or destroyed original videos showing the 2012 killing of a Mexican teenager by a Border Patrol agent who fired across the border, a new court filing says.
Agent Lonnie Swartz fired through slats in the border fence in Nogales, AZ, 4-1/2 years ago, killing 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez on the other side in Nogales, Sonora. Swartz was charged with second-degree murder in federal court in September 2015. His trial is expected to begin later this year.
Swartz’s lawyer, Sean Chapman, filed a motion this week to have duplicate border surveillance videos precluded as evidence in Swartz’s trial because of technical issues. He argued that the duplicate video footage is too compressed to be reliable. But his filing also says the Border Patrol either lost or destroyed the original video that was contained on a computer hard drive.
The video was taken by several Border Patrol pole cameras in the area where the shooting occurred.
Chapman’s filing says “one of the the videos purports to show Agent Swartz firing at the decedent from three different positions. Another purports to show the decedent moving after he collapsed to the ground.” The latter is a crucial factor in this case.
“On the night of the shooting, the FBI responded and obtained a copy of the videos, but made no effort to preserve the original. Several years later, in October 2015, efforts were made by law enforcement to obtain the original video captures of the incident that night. By this time, however, the original video (contained on a hard drive) had been lost or destroyed,” the filing said.
Chapman’s motion argues the video copies are “highly compressed and deeply flawed,” and that the image quality is substantially degraded. The motion also argues that the videos contain insufficient data to determine if Elena Rodriguez moved while on the ground, and that their poor quality could “lead to the appearance of motion by the deceased that does not likely exist on the original video.”
Elena Rodriguez was shot 10 times in the back and head on Oct. 10, 2012. The shooting left him face-down in a pool of blood, documents said. An autopsy showed as many as eight of the bullets may have hit Elena Rodriguez while he lay on the ground.
The Border Patrol said the agent fired at rock-throwers. Witnesses dispute that, and point out it was implausible for rocks thrown from the Mexican side to hit someone on the U.S. side of the fence because the Mexican side is about 25 feet lower.
Chapman moved to preclude both the video and testimony, opinions and re-creations made by the government’s expert witness.
Chapman did not return calls to discuss the issue. The U.S. Attorney’s Office also declined to comment.
Federal prosecutors are expected to reply to in the the coming weeks to Chapman’s motion, which argued the issue could one again delay the trial’s start. It has already been delayed more than five times since Swartz was charged in fall 2015.
Isabel Garcia, spokeswoman for the Coalici
Source: azcentral.com