The Office of the Attorney General wants a $100,000 cash bail for retired Army reservist Michael Barry Murphy if the Superior Court grants Murphy\u2019s request to hold a preliminary hearing in his second sexual abuse of a minor case. <\/p>\n
Assistant attorney general Betsy Weintraub wants Murphy\u2019s bid for a preliminary examination be denied \u201cas the case does not substantially deprive\u201d the 54-year-old Murphy of his liberty.<\/p>\n
If not, the court should set a $100,000 bail on Murphy so that he has a legitimate right to a preliminary examination, Weintraub said.<\/p>\n
Defense counsel Janet H. King asked the court for a preliminary hearing so that Murphy can obtain information regarding the charges against him and file a bill of particulars\u2014a list of written statements made by a party to a court proceeding, upon demand of another party in the case that seeks for more details of a claim or defense.<\/p>\n
Murphy is currently out in the other criminal case after posting a $50,000 bond. In that case, the government accused him with sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree and sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree, for allegedly sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl on Aug. 6, 2016.<\/p>\n
The government summoned Murphy to appear in court and answer the charges in the second case. King then requested the court for a preliminary hearing in the second case.<\/p>\n
Preliminary hearing refers to a court proceeding to determine if a defendant should be tried for the crime charged based on whether there is substantial evidence that he\/she committed the offense.<\/p>\n
In opposing the motion for preliminary examination, Weintraub said the court should deny the request because Murphy is not \u201csubstantially deprived of his liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weintraub said in the second case, Murphy was never arrested as the government served him only with penal summons.<\/p>\n
Weintraub said neither the U.S. Constitution nor the CNMI Constitution provide the right to a preliminary examination to an individual who has been charged through penal summons and information.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said the purpose of a preliminary examination is to determine whether there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that the accused committed it.<\/p>\n
Weintraub said the case has had no effect on Murphy\u2019s liberty as he was never arrested and is not under any bail conditions for these charges.<\/p>\n
In this second case, the government charged the defendant with two counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree, and one count of indecent exposure in the first degree. The incident allegedly happened from 1994 to 2004 when the victim was a minor. The victim is now 26 years old, according to court documents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Office of the Attorney General wants a $100,000 cash bail for retired Army reservist…<\/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":[8528,12993,86,223],"class_list":["post-245925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-betsy-weintraub","tag-michael-barry-murphy","tag-oag","tag-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245925","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=245925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}