Rasa’s wife demands for speedy trial

The wife of former ex-Speaker Oscar Rasa demanded the Superior Court for a speedy trial, noting the delayed filing of criminal charges against the couple during their scheduled arraignment last Monday.

Patricia Rasa only received a copy of the criminal information against her and the former lawmaker when she stepped inside the courtroom for her scheduled arraignment. The court reset the arraignment for the Rasas to next week.

“This caused unnecessary delay. The arraignments had to be continued so that the due process guarantees…can be given meaning and effect given the [Attorney General’s Office] failure to obey the court’s rules,” said Patricia Rasa’s lawyer, public defender Masood Karimipour.

“Mrs. Patricia Rasa invokes her rights…and demands a speedy and public trial without unnecessary delay,” Karimipour said.

Karimipour noted that the AGO did not file the criminal information before having the Rasa couple arrested on Dec. 22. He also said that the AGO did not file with the court the information and serve it to the defendants before the scheduled arraignment.

“Instead, the AGO waited until the very moment Mrs. Rasa stepped up before the court at 9am on Jan. 3, 2005 to serve her with an information containing 28 felony counts,” he said. The AGO filed the information minutes before the scheduled arraignment.

The information charged the Rasas with 28 counts of theft by deception, which the couple allegedly committed on several occasions from Dec. 16, 2003 to June 30, 2004.

The AGO accused the Rasas of scheming to defraud 82-year-old businessman Richard J. Szumiel by obtaining numerous loans and misrepresenting that they would receive over $1 million in land compensation payment from the government. Verification made by AGO investigators revealed that the Rasas had no pending land compensation claim before the Marianas Public Lands Authority.

The AGO also said the ownership of land that the Rasas represented that they would get compensated for had long been transferred to another person before the defendants’ transactions with Szumiel.

Based on investigation conducted by the AGO’s investigative unit, Szumiel issued to the Rasas 28 checks totaling $72,000 from December 2003 to June 2004, and some $7,500 in cash. The former lawmaker endorsed one check in the amount of $2,800, while his wife endorsed almost all the checks issued by Szumiel.

The Rasas are currently out on bail, after Gov. Juan N. Babauta posted $3,000 bonds for each of them two days before Christmas. Police arrested the Rasas at the Aqua Resort Club a day earlier pursuant to arrest warrants issued by Superior Court judge Ramona Manglona.