The Office of the Attorney General is presently reviewing the sanctions order as to assistant attorney general Betsy Weintraub issued by the Superior Court in Commonwealth v. Murphy, Criminal Case 16-0160. <\/p>\n
In a statement on Friday, it said that Attorney General Edward Manibusan acknowledges that the Commonwealth Constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, assigns certain responsibilities to each branch of government. He adds that these responsibilities serve as checks and balances on the other branches, and create a separation of powers. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn our criminal justice system, the prosecutor has broad discretion in deciding whom to prosecute,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He explained that the Commonwealth does not often seek dismissal of a criminal case, but when it does the case law is clear that the prosecution is entitled to a presumption of good faith \u201cbecause we are exercising\u201d our constitutional powers. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Office of the Attorney General takes this responsibility very seriously,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Commonwealth, upon completing its review, will decide whether a review by the Supreme Court is permissible. \u201cI support the prosecutors in my office when they follow the proper procedures and act in the best interest of justice,\u201d Manibusan said. (Saipan Tribune)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Office of the Attorney General is presently reviewing the sanctions order as to assistant…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8528,18254,86,139],"class_list":["post-259929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-betsy-weintraub","tag-criminal-case","tag-oag","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259929","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}