TEXAS CONGRESSMAN MAY REVIVE CASE OF MARINE BORDER SLAYING

CAMP PENDLETON -- A former Marine who shot and killed a teen-age goatherd
along the Texas border with Mexico last year has been cleared by several
investigations but may face another probe, this time by Congress.

Clemente Banuelos, 23, who was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps
here at the end of his enlistment in June, shot Esequiel Hernandez Jr. in
May 1997 when the 18-year-old allegedly fired twice at Banuelos' four-man
patrol.

Two state grand juries and a federal grand jury have declined to indict
Banuelos.

But now a Texas congressman has begun his own investigation, delving into
20 boxes of evidence and information about the shooting before deciding
whether to conduct hearings.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is head of the House Subcommittee on
Immigration, which oversees the Immigration and Naturalization Service and
the Border Patrol.

At the time of the shooting, the Marines were part of a joint military task
force supporting the Border Patrol's effort to curb illegal immigration and
drug smuggling.

Hernandez was tending his family's goats and may have been shooting at cans
with a vintage rifle. But the Marines believed he was firing at them.

Banuelos radioed the Border Patrol that someone had shot at them and then
said, "If the man points his weapon down-range again, we are going to take
him," Banuelos' attorney, Jack Zimmermann, said a tape of the conversation
revealed.

The Border Patrol responded: "Roger. Fire back."

Twenty minutes later, Hernandez was dead.

"We don't know how it happened," Smith's spokesman, Allen Kay, said in a
telephone interview from Washington. "The congressman does not think the
death has been fully explained."

In any event, said Kay, "no one has been held accountable. The typical
American knows more about the latest traffic fatality in their community
than we know about the first military shooting on U.S. soil since 1970,"
when four students were gunned down by National Guardsmen at Kent State
University.

Kay said Smith "has promised a public accounting of this shooting." The
grand juries have heard testimony behind closed doors.

Since the Border Patrol was responsible for putting the Marines in the
field manning an observation post, Kay said, Smith "has leaned more toward
Border Patrol supervisors" than Banuelos as a target of a possible
congressional investigation.

"Who is responsible for placing those Marines near a populated community?"
the spokesman asked.

Admitting no wrongdoing, the federal government recently settled a civil
claim from the Hernandez family by agreeing to buy a $1 million annuity
that will pay an undisclosed sum annually for 20 years, the family's
attorney said. Including an initial payment from the government, the family
can expect to receive $1.9 million over time, according to the attorney.

Zimmermann, a retired Marine colonel, has represented Banuelos at
government expense since shortly after the shooting.

"At some point," he said, "we need to let Clemente Banuelos know what he
did was what he was supposed to do and let it go. His actions were entirely
justified under the law and consistent with what he was trained to do."

Zimmermann repeated that Banuelos was cleared by three grand juries.

He said Banuelos left the Marine Corps because his enlistment was up and
because he might have had to leave his artillery job specialty for a less
attractive assignment due to the scarcity of promotions in the artillery
classification.

He added, "I don't see how a young man who answers his country's call and
does what he has to do and then gets put under the griddle for a year --
how could that not color his thinking?"

Zimmermann, who would not disclose where the Northern California native is
now living, said Banuelos is looking for a job and he and his wife "are
doing better" than last year when the pressure was intense.

Still, the attorney said, "I've stopped telling the man it's over."

Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson