{"id":14643,"date":"2011-10-07T07:14:56","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T07:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=14643"},"modified":"2011-10-07T07:14:56","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T07:14:56","slug":"jury-deliberations-today-in-cepeda-retrial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/jury-deliberations-today-in-cepeda-retrial\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury deliberations today in Cepeda retrial"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>By Ferdie de la Torre<br \/>\nReporter<\/div>\n<p>Superior Court jurors are expected to commence today, Friday, their deliberations in the retrial of Franklin Cabrera Cepeda Jr. for the 1999 murder of a businessman inside a karaoke bar in San Jose.<\/p>\n<p>Defense counsel Colin Thompson rested their case yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Associate judge Perry B. Inos directed the six jurors to return today, Friday, at 9am to start deliberations.<\/p>\n<p>Thompson and prosecutors Russell Lorfing and Peter B. Prestley gave their closing arguments yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Prestley said evidence shows that Cepeda came up with the plan to rob, he took a baseball bat and a knife, and he killed Rong Zhou, also known as Matthew, inside the Yellow House Karaoke on March 1, 1999.<\/p>\n<p>Prestley cited the testimonies of Cepeda&#8217;s co-defendant, George Ilo, and witnesses Benjie Fitial and Melvin Cabrera as very strong evidence against Cepeda.<\/p>\n<p>Thompson argued that the prosecution failed to meet the burden to prove each element of the crimes filed against Cepeda.<\/p>\n<p>Thompson said the testimonies and evidence of the government are unreliable and uncorroborated.<\/p>\n<p>Thompson described the government&#8217;s witnesses-Ilo, Fitial, and Cabrera-as liars.<\/p>\n<p>The defense lawyer said he can&#8217;t understand that in this one murder case, there was an investigation in 2000 and another in 2003.<\/p>\n<p>Thompson was referring to the Office of the Attorney General&#8217;s filing in 2000 of charges against Jeffrey Deleon Guerrero, who was subsequently acquitted, and the filing of charges in 2003 against Cepeda and Ilo.<\/p>\n<p>Ilo pleaded guilty, while Cepeda was found guilty during a trial in 2005. The CNMI Supreme Court, however, vacated Cepeda&#8217;s convictions and ordered a new trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ferdie de la Torre Reporter Superior Court jurors are expected to commence today, Friday,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}