On Sept. 5, 2017, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Commonwealth v. Melvin Monkeya, 2017 MP 7. The high court affirmed Monkeya\u2019s conviction. <\/p>\n
Monkeya was charged with one count of sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree. The charge arose out of allegations that sometime in November 2008, Monkeya engaged in sexual penetration with a minor who was a household member of Monkeya\u2019s, was under 16 years of age, and to whom he occupied a position of authority. Jury trial began on Dec. 2, 2013, and Monkeya was convicted on Dec. 4, 2013. <\/p>\n
On appeal, Monkeya argued the high court should reverse his conviction for six reasons: (1) the trial court improperly denied his request for expert assistance; (2) the trial court erred by failing to include a cut-off date in a jury instruction regarding \u201cno proof of exact time\u201d; (3) the trial court erred by failing to reiterate jury instructions at the close of evidence; (4) the prosecution committed reversible Doyle error by eliciting testimony commenting on Monkeya\u2019s invocation of his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent; (5) the use of facts not in evidence during closing arguments was prosecutorial misconduct that prejudiced him; and (6) these errors, even if individually harmless, in the aggregate materially affected the verdict. <\/p>\n
The Supreme Court found the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it denied Monkeya\u2019s request for expert assistance because he failed to make a particularized showing of need, the standard the high court established in Commonwealth v. Perez, 2006 MP 24. <\/p>\n
The high court further found the \u201cno proof of exact time\u201d jury instruction was not in error given the circumstances of this case and the contents of the instruction. While the high court concluded the trial court\u2019s failure to read substantive jury instructions at the close of trial, the prosecution\u2019s questioning of the lead detective regarding Monkeya\u2019s silence upon arrest, and the prosecution\u2019s statements in closing arguments were all errors, it concluded the errors, both individually and in the aggregate, were harmless and did not warrant reversing Monkeya\u2019s conviction. <\/p>\n
The high court\u2019s full opinion is available at http:\/\/www.cnmilaw.org\/supreme17.html. <\/p>\n
For further information, contact the Supreme Court at 236-9800. (PR)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Sept. 5, 2017, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Commonwealth v. Melvin Monkeya,…<\/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":[8815,18190,292,139],"class_list":["post-259619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-fifth-amendment","tag-melvin-monkeya","tag-mp","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259619","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=259619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}