Superior Court Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho has rejected as too lenient a proposed nine-month prison term on Peter Koichi Lemei, a habitual offender who is facing a new theft case. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe people of the CNMI deserve to have a safe community. There can be no justice without the appropriate punishment,\u201d said Camacho in rejecting the proposed plea agreement.<\/p>\n
Camacho noted that Lemei, 46, is a repeat offender and the allegation in this case is that he stole the purse and money in front of the alleged victim, who knew and identified him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe jail sentence under the proposed plea agreement fails to conform to the standards of this court and the CNMI community, and does not account for facts and factors for a careful and individualize sentence,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
Court records show that Lemei used Koichi as his last name in the past.<\/p>\n
Camacho said Lemei has multiple prior convictions for robbery, burglary, theft, and assault and battery.<\/p>\n
In this case, the Office of the Attorney General charged the defendant with theft (felony), which carries a maximum sentence of not more than five years.<\/p>\n
Under the proposed plea deal, Lemei would have pleaded guilty to theft as a misdemeanor. The proposed sentence is one-year imprisonment, all suspended except for nine months, with credit for time served.<\/p>\n
In rejecting the proposed plea agreement, Camacho said the OAG does not give any reasonable explanation why the charges are reduced or that the plea terms serve the interest of justice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Superior Court Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho has rejected as too lenient a proposed nine-month…<\/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":[2626,26,86,12682],"class_list":["post-233139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-attorney-general","tag-cnmi","tag-oag","tag-peter-koichi-lemei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233139","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=233139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}