On Dec. 28, 2015, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court\u2019s judgment that convicted Arinna Reiong and Norna Tipingeni of aggravated assault and battery.<\/p>\n
In Commonwealth v. Reiong, 2015 MP 13, Reiong and Tipingeni argued that the evidence was insufficient to convict them of aggravated assault and battery, and the trial court erred by failing to read the lesser-included offense instructions to the jury.<\/p>\n
Appellants asserted that the victim did not suffer from a \u201cserious bodily injury,\u201d an essential element of aggravated assault and battery. \u201cSerious bodily injury,\u201d is defined under 6 CMC \u00a7 103(o) as an injury that \u201ccreates a high probability of death\u2026causes serious permanent disfigurement, or\u2026causes a permanent or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ, or other bodily injury of like severity.\u201d In support of their argument, appellants maintain that the \u201cother bodily injury of like severity\u201d phrase of \u00a7 103(o) does not broaden the statute, and the victim\u2019s injuries did not create a high probability of death, cause serious permanent disfigurement, or cause a permanent or protracted loss or impairment of the a bodily member or organ. Because the victim did not suffer an injury explicitly listed in \u00a7 103(o), appellants reasoned that their aggravated assault and battery convictions must be reversed.<\/p>\n
In paragraph nine of the opinion, the high court found appellants\u2019 interpretation of \u00a7 103(o) unpersuasive because proper statutory interpretation seeks to provide meaning to every word of a statute, noting that \u201c[t]he Legislature would not have included the \u2018other bodily injury of like severity\u2019 phrase if it intended for that phrase to be meaningless.\u201d The high court held that serious bodily injury under \u00a7\u00a0103(o) \u201cencompasses not only the injuries explicitly set forth in \u00a7\u00a0103(o) but also other injuries that are of similar severity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The high court then stated the injuries suffered by the victim were similar to those sustained by other victims in cases that upheld convictions requiring an elevated form of injury. Specifically, the victim here suffered from the following as a result of the attack: a bloody nose and mouth, difficulty breathing and understanding, an inability to walk, pain when moving her head, headaches and dizziness months after the attack, memory loss, and loss of hair. Furthermore, the Supreme Court acknowledged the attending physician assistant\u2019s corroborating testimony regarding the severity of the victim\u2019s injuries. Based on the evidence and rulings in other similar cases, the high court concluded that a reasonable juror could have found the evidence sufficient to make a serious bodily injury determination.<\/p>\n
Next, appellants argued that the trial court erred by refusing to give a lesser-included offense instruction to the jury. The high court reaffirmed its decision in Commonwealth v. Guiao, 2015 MP 1, stating that the trial court does not err by declining to read to the jury instructions of lesser-included offenses that are bench charges. Like Guiao, the high court concluded that a rational juror could not have convicted the appellants of those charges because those charges were to be determined by the bench\u2014not the jury.<\/p>\n
The high court\u2019s full opinion is available at http:\/\/www.cnmilaw.org\/supreme15.html. (NMI Judiciary)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Dec. 28, 2015, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court\u2019s judgment that convicted Arinna…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[331,4722,292,139],"class_list":["post-217507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-attack","tag-cmc","tag-mp","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217507","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\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}