Citing prosecutorial misconduct, the Office of the Public Defender moved again Tuesday to exclude the testimony of the alleged victim in a 2013 sexual assault case filed against former Rota liaison employee Allan Apatang Taitano. <\/p>\n
Assistant public defender Heather M. Zona, counsel for Taitano, also asked the Superior Court to dismiss the case due to alleged violation of Taitano\u2019s right to speedy trial.<\/p>\n
Superior Court Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho set a hearing on Taitano\u2019s motion on April 11, 2018.<\/p>\n
Zona said the Office of the Attorney General manipulated the evidence in this case by telling the alleged victim and only eyewitness not to talk to the defense lawyer.<\/p>\n
Zona said suppression of evidence favorable to the defendant or that is material to guilt or punishment denies due process, regardless of whether bad faith was involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere, there is no question as to the government\u2019s bad faith,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Zona said the case should be dismissed because Taitano\u2019s constitutional right to a speedy trial has been violated.<\/p>\n
She asserted that dismissal is appropriate because the government is responsible for the substantial and unwarranted delay.<\/p>\n
Taitano was arrested on April 28, 2013, for allegedly sexually assaulting a man. The OAG filed the case on May 10, 2013.<\/p>\n
In October 2014, the Superior Court excluded the testimony of a mother and her son, whom Taitano allegedly tried to sexually assault.<\/p>\n
The trial court also granted Taitano\u2019s motion to exclude the testimony of the alleged victim.<\/p>\n
Last December, the CNMI Supreme Court vacated the Superior Court\u2019s exclusion ruling and remanded the case to the trial court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Citing prosecutorial misconduct, the Office of the Public Defender moved again Tuesday to exclude the…<\/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":[20114,3396,12570,88],"class_list":["post-270117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-allan-apatang-taitano","tag-opd","tag-public-defender","tag-superior-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270117","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=270117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}