Former attorney general Edward T. Buckingham was sentenced this afternoon, Wednesday, to 3.5 years in prison, all suspended, for his conviction on corruption charges.<\/p>\n
Superior Court Associate Judge Kenneth L. Govendo ordered the 65-year-old Buckingham to pay a $14,000 fine and placed him on unsupervised probation.<\/p>\n
Govendo prohibited the former AG from employment with the CNMI government for 20 years. <\/p>\n
Office of the Public Auditor legal counsel George Hasselback recommended a sentence of one year in prison, without possibility of parole, and fine.<\/p>\n
Before he was sentenced, Buckingham made a brief statement to the court, in which he apologized for his conduct.<\/p>\n
Govendo found Buckingham guilty of use of public supplies, time and personnel for campaign activities; use of the name of a government department or agency to campaign and\/or express support for a candidate running for public office; misconduct in public office (related to campaign matter); conspiracy to commit theft of services (related to escort issue); misconduct in public office (pertaining to escort issue); conspiracy to commit theft service (related to use government counsels to represent him); and misconduct in public office (use of government counsels). <\/p>\n
Govendo acquitted Buckingham on one count of failure to produce documents or information (pertaining to Office of the Public Auditor\u2019s request).<\/p>\n
The bench trial began last Feb. 10. <\/p>\n
OPA originally filed 12 criminal charges against Buckingham in connection with an alleged violation of election laws and illegal award of a sole-source contract, among others. <\/p>\n
Govendo earlier dismissed four charges, including those pertaining to the contract issue. <\/p>\n
More details to follow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former attorney general Edward T. Buckingham was sentenced this afternoon, Wednesday, to 3.5 years in prison, all suspended, for his conviction on corruption charges.<\/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-175915","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\/175915","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=175915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}