With only one presentence investigator\/writer for the Superior Court, the new sentencing of a dive master who was found guilty of killing and getting a protected spotted eagle ray will take place in May 2015, a year later from the day of a bench trial that lasted only a day. <\/p>\n
At a hearing yesterday, Superior Court Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho continued the new sentencing of Hu Jie Fang for May 6, 2015 at 9am.<\/p>\n
Camacho noted that CNMI probation officer Simram W. Simram wrote him, requesting to give him more time to prepare the presentence investigation and postpone the new sentencing of Fang.<\/p>\n
In the letter, Simram disclosed that he is the only presentence investigator\/writer for the court and is currently handling 15 presentence investigation cases on top of regular probation supervision cases.<\/p>\n
The CNMI Supreme Court recently issued an opinion that presentence investigation report shall be conducted upon a defendant\u2019s request. The high court\u2019s ruling basically takes away trial judges\u2019 discretion whether to order a presentence investigation report or not.<\/p>\n
The high court\u2019s opinion may delay sentencing of criminals due to the backlog in presentence investigation reports.<\/p>\n
In Fang\u2019s case, Judge Camacho found Fang guilty of one count of ray protection at a bench trial last June 8. Witnesses testified that Fang shot a three feet wide spotted eagle ray with a spear gun and took the ray on Jan 15, 2014. <\/p>\n
Less than two weeks later after the trial, Camacho conducted the sentencing hearing and ordered the defendant to spend the maximum sentence of six months in prison.<\/p>\n
Assistant public defender Matthew Meyer, counsel for Fang, insisted yesterday that a presentence investigation report be conducted in this case.<\/p>\n
Camacho ordered the Probation Office to submit the presentence investigation report on April 17, 2015, and directed the parties to file their sentencing memorandum brief on May 1, 2015.<\/p>\n
Camacho noted that due to the numerous requests for a presentence investigation report, a number that is expected to increase, the sentencing hearing in Fang\u2019s case will now occur a year later from the date of the one-day bench trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With only one presentence investigator\/writer for the Superior Court, the new sentencing of a dive…<\/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":[26,1195,88],"class_list":["post-187413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-matthew-meyer","tag-superior-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187413","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=187413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}