DOC chief says no VIP treatment for Miura

Japanese businessman Kazuyoshi Miura is being treated humanely at the Department of Corrections just like any other detainees, according to DOC commissioner Lino Tenorio.

“No special treatment,” said Tenorio in an interview with the Saipan Tribune.

“We’re trying to stick to the very basic way of treating the inmates…basically the same as everybody else,” he said.

The DOC commissioner said they were able to accommodate the request of Miura’s counsel, but only to “a very minimal extension, not too much.”

“It’s only the understanding of the time differences between here and Japan and the states as far as Miura calling the wife and the states for the attorney,” Tenorio said.

Other than that, the commissioner said, Miura is limited with the three-minute phone calls a day.

Tenorio said the detainee is actually given two phone calls a day because he is given extra minutes at nighttime for him to call his wife or his attorney.

Miura has been in detention since authorities arrested him at the Saipan International Airport last Feb. 22 in connection with the murder of his wife in Los Angeles in 1981.

The defense team of Miura and the Attorney General’s Office last week agreed to request the Superior Court to allow a two-week extension for Miura to file his petition for habeas corpus.

Following the stipulation by the parties in the case, Superior Court associate judge Ramona V. Manglona granted the request.

Miura’s counsel, Bruce Berline, and chief prosecutor Jeffery Warfield Sr., reached an agreement for an extension due to a hearing in the Superior Court of Los Angeles next week, April 23.

In the stipulation, Berline and Warfield said the April 23 hearing is about Miura’s motion to quash the underlying California arrest warrant against the defendant in the L.A. Superior Court.

The lawyers said a ruling from that motion “may be dispositive” of the extradition matter filed against Miura in the CNMI Superior Court.

Manglona’s earlier order required Miura’s counsel to file such petition by April 18.

Berline and Warfield, however, agreed to request the court to extend the briefing schedule for the petition, opposition and reply.

The parties requested that the petition would be due on or before May 2, 2008.

They agreed that any opposition brief from the AGO and or the State of California would be due on or before May 16, 2008.

Any reply brief filed by Miura would be due on or before May 19, 2008.

Last Friday, the San Diego Superior Court dismissed a murder charge a Mexican man who had already served a sentence in Mexico for murdering his wife 20 years ago. The court cited the principle of avoiding double jeopardy, in which a person may not be tried twice over the same crime.

The Saipan legal team of Miura earlier expressed belief that the San Diego court’s double jeopardy ruling will have a strong impact on Miura’s murder case.