U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona has granted a joint motion to delay the sentencing of Xing Bo Fang, a man tagged by authorities as the leader of a group of meth suppliers on Saipan. <\/p>\n
In an order on Friday, Manglona rescheduled Fang\u2019s sentencing to Feb. 6, 2015 at 9am. Fang\u2019s sentencing was supposed to be yesterday, Dec. 2.<\/p>\n
Manglona found good cause to postpone the sentencing based upon Fang\u2019s and the U.S. government\u2019s stipulated motion.<\/p>\n
Fang is cooperating with the U.S. government and is willing to testify, if necessary, against the alleged second in command of a group of \u201cice\u201d distributors on island. <\/p>\n
David G. Banes, as counsel for Fang, and assistant U.S. attorney Ross Naughton disclosed last week that, as part of Fang\u2019s cooperation with the U.S. government, he has agreed to testify against co-defendant Yu Hua Wang.<\/p>\n
Wang\u2019s trial has been taken off calendar due to the ongoing evaluation of his competency to stand trial. His evaluation is expected to take up to 60 days, said Banes and Naughton in a joint motion to move Fang\u2019s sentencing.<\/p>\n
Fang has signed a plea deal with the U.S. government. He pleaded guilty to count one of the indictment charging him with conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine. <\/p>\n
His sentencing was originally set for July 11, 2014. <\/p>\n
Banes and Naughton said that until Fang either testifies at trial or Wang pleads guilty or is found incompetent, the U.S. government cannot evaluate the level of Fang\u2019s cooperation, including an evaluation of if Fang qualifies for \u201csubstantial assistance\u201d to the government.<\/p>\n
According to the factual basis of the plea agreement, Fang sold approximately 98.7 grams of 98.0 percent pure methamphetamine hydrochloride to a confidential source of the Drug Enforcement Administration at the instruction of Wang on Dec. 27, 2013. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona has granted a joint…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[93,219],"class_list":["post-186334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-district-court","tag-ross-naughton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186334","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}