U. S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona granted yesterday a motion to vacate the convictions of Jesus S. Palacios on five charges. An ex-convict in Guam, Palacios was found guilty last month of all charges filed on Saipan for possession of two guns and 27 bullets.<\/p>\n
Manglona vacated Palacios\u2019 convictions on two counts of felon in possession of a firearm and\/or ammunition, and three counts of unlawful user of a controlled substance in possession of a firearm and\/or ammunition.<\/p>\n
Manglona, however, ruled that Palacios\u2019 sentencing will proceed on March 24, 2014, at 1:30pm.<\/p>\n
Manglona issued the order after Palacios, through counsel Mark Scoggins, moved to vacate his convictions on five charges on double-jeopardy grounds.<\/p>\n
Manglona said the six counts charge the defendant with a single instance of unlawful firearms and ammunition possession under two different sections of the law.<\/p>\n
The judge said Palacios asserts, and the U.S. government agrees, that under these circumstances only one conviction may enter.<\/p>\n
Last Dec. 4, the jury returned a guilty verdict against the 52-year-old Palacios on all six counts.<\/p>\n
The filing of the indictment arose from an incident in April 2013 when police arrested Palacios for allegedly beating up his wife in front of their child and pointing a gun at her head when she refused to give him money.<\/p>\n
The then 4-year-old boy told police that he witnessed the beating of his mother and that he also saw his father smoke \u201cice\u201d and has four guns.<\/p>\n
Police learned that Palacios was arrested in Guam in 1997 and was charged with murder, manslaughter, and possession of a gun without an ID. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U. S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona granted yesterday a…<\/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":[51],"class_list":["post-26907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-guam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26907","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=26907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}