On Dec. 19, 2016, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Commonwealth v Carmelita Guiao, 2016 MP 15. The Court affirmed Guiao\u2019s conviction of assault with a dangerous weapon and sentence of 10 years. <\/p>\n
Guiao was found guilty of striking her live-in partner John Saimon with a vehicle. <\/p>\n
Guiao appealed, arguing that her conviction and sentence should be vacated because the trial court erred by denying her motion for mistrial and improperly admitting testimony of a non-expert witness. Because Guiao\u2019s opening brief did not cite to any legal authority, the high court ordered her to file a supplemental brief to remedy the defect, which Guiao subsequently filed.<\/p>\n
The high court, having reviewed the parties\u2019 briefs and heard oral arguments, decided that Guiao\u2019s arguments would not be considered on appeal because they were not adequately argued, a violation of Supreme Court Rule 28(a)(9)(A). The high court found Guiao\u2019s legal analysis cursory and conclusory, and found the cases cited by Guiao irrelevant. <\/p>\n
The court noted that NMI Supreme Court Rules require that parties\u2019 briefs contain legal arguments and analysis with citations to applicable authorities and that these rules are not simply advisory but fundamental to the adversarial system of justice.<\/p>\n
The court stated \u201cBefore we can address the merits of an appeal, we must be first presented with those merits to examine. We are \u2018not simply a depository which the appealing party may dump the burden of argument and research.\u2019\u201d The court further noted that it cannot act as an advocate of any party but only as arbiters of law. Because Guiao failed to properly present her arguments despite multiple opportunities to do so, the court affirmed the trial court\u2019s judgment.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court\u2019s full opinion is available at http:\/\/www.cnmilaw.org\/supreme16.html. (NMI Judiciary)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Dec. 19, 2016, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Commonwealth v Carmelita Guiao,…<\/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":[291,11931,223,13907],"class_list":["post-242865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-high-court","tag-john-saimon","tag-party","tag-supreme-court-rule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242865","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=242865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}