Brown pleased with court ruling on AG suits

With the Superior Court’s denial of the request to dismiss the criminal case against Joaquin Peredo, attorney general Pamela Brown hopes that the trend of requesting the dismissal of cases by assailing her legitimacy will stop.

Brown issued a media statement Tuesday, saying that she and her office were pleased with the ruling made by presiding judge Robert Naraja.

Naraja is expected to issue similar rulings in two other criminal cases, on which the Public Defender’s Office has similar dismissal requests. Naraja consolidated the hearings on those two cases, which were filed against against one Md. Aktar Hossain and one Hua Wu Cheng, with that against Peredo.

Assistant public defender Angela Marie Krueger gave terse comments on Naraja’s ruling, saying that the Public Defender’s Office has yet to decide whether to appeal it.

“I am pleased that the court respects the authority of the [AGO] and its ability to continue to do the people’s work. Our office has had to spend a lot of time and resources defending against these attacks as well as similar ones in other cases,” Brown said.

“I am also gratified that the court recognizes and plans to focus on the real issue in these cases: the guilt or innocence of the defendants. I am hopeful [that] other courts deciding this same issue will rule the same way,” she added.

Brown branded court pleadings that requested for several cases’ dismissal by assailing her legitimacy as attorney general as “personal attacks” on her.

She said that that defense tactic began when former Senate president Juan S. Demapan filed a lawsuit that seeks to declare her as occupying the attorney general post unlawfully. She also noted that lawyer Pedro Atalig—who represents the Malite heirs in a separate lawsuit filed by the AGO to stop the disbursement of some $3.45 million in an allegedly spurious land compensation claim—represents Demapan in that case.

Besides the cases against Peredo, Hossain and Chen, there are three other criminal cases wherein the PDO had filed similar dismissal requests.

Public defender Masood Karimipour earlier insisted that Brown is occupying the attorney general post unlawfully, disclosing that his office would file similar dismissal requests in other criminal cases.

“Maybe now we will be able to focus our energies on the more important and pressing issues of the Commonwealth instead of these personal attacks,” Brown said.