Former Rota customs officer Albert A. Taitano and former Division of Fish and Wildlife staff David A. Santos pleaded guilty Friday in federal court to charges of conspiring to poach a breeding colony of threatened Mariana fruit bats in 2008.<\/p>\n
The trial in the case was supposed to start on Jan. 13, 2014, but Taitano and Santos agreed to plead guilty as part of a deal with the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
They both pleaded guilty to a count of conspiring to unlawfully take and transport a threatened species\u2014a misdemeanor offense.<\/p>\n
Taitano and Santos will be sentenced in March 2014.<\/p>\n
Assistant U.S. attorney Garth R. Backe appeared for the U.S. government at the hearing. <\/p>\n
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona presided over the case.<\/p>\n
Taitano and Santos were indicted in 2011 with retired police lieutenant Adrian Mendiola over the same alleged poaching incident in 2008. <\/p>\n
Only Mendiola\u2019s jury trial proceeded in May 2011 in federal court. At the time, the court dismissed without prejudice the charges against Taitano and Santos at the prosecution\u2019s request.<\/p>\n
Jurors later found Mendiola guilty of unlawful possession of a threatened wildlife but not guilty of unlawful receipt or acquisition of threatened wildlife. <\/p>\n
On April 13, 2013, the U.S. government filed a superseding indictment, charging Taitano and Mendiola with conspiring to unlawfully take and transport a threatened species, taking a threatened species, and transporting a threatened species taken in violation of law. The U.S. government sought to forfeit the defendants\u2019 shotguns.<\/p>\n
According to the superseding indictment, Taitano and Santos poached a fruit bat colony on Rota on Nov. 1, 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Rota customs officer Albert A. Taitano and former Division of Fish and Wildlife staff David A. Santos pleaded guilty Friday in federal court to charges of conspiring to poach a breeding colony of threatened Mariana fruit bats in 2008.<\/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-174897","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\/174897","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=174897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}