Michael L. Ernest has resigned as chief prosecutor of the Office of the Attorney General\u2019s Criminal Division, Saipan Tribune learned.<\/p>\n
Multiple sources from the legal community and the OAG disclosed since last week that Ernest had already submitted his resignation letter to Attorney General Edward T. Buckingham.<\/p>\n
Ernest refused to comment yesterday. Buckingham did not reply to two emails requesting comment about Ernest\u2019s resignation.<\/p>\n
According to sources, Ernest\u2019s last day as chief prosecutor was yesterday and that he is now using all his available leave time.<\/p>\n
Ernest, however, will remain at the OAG and will possibly work in the Civil Division, at least two lawyers told Saipan Tribune over the weekend.<\/p>\n
The reason behind Ernest\u2019s resignation was not immediately clear.<\/p>\n
Sources said that Ernest has enjoyed strong support from fellow prosecutors and staff because of his professionalism in running the OAG\u2019s Criminal Division.<\/p>\n
Under Ernest\u2019s term, problems relating to case backlogs was addressed and the age of cases was significantly reduced.<\/p>\n
Buckingham appointed Ernest as chief prosecutor in June 2010 after Rosemond B. Santos resigned from the post.<\/p>\n
Prior to joining the OAG, Ernest served as Senate legal counsel for five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael L. Ernest has resigned as chief prosecutor of the Office of the Attorney General\u2019s Criminal Division, Saipan Tribune learned.<\/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-156344","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\/156344","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=156344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}