The federal court granted yesterday the request of Rota Mayor Efraim M. Atalig and his girlfriend, Evelyn Atalig, to postpone the jury trial in their case. <\/p>\n
The trial was originally set to start on June 4, 2019; the new trial date is Oct. 1, 2019.<\/p>\n
At a brief pre-trial conference, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona vacated the jury trial and set the new date.<\/p>\n
The Ataligs, who are both in Manila, the Philippines, right now, appeared by telephone at the conference.<\/p>\n
Manglona earlier granted their request to appear via telephone.<\/p>\n
The court-appointed counsel for Efraim Atalig, David George Banes, informed the court last Tuesday that the mayor just went through open-heart surgery in in the Philippines.<\/p>\n
In Efraim Atalig\u2019s request to appear by telephone, Banes said the mayor needs to undergo rehabilitation treatment and physical therapy thrice a week and will not be able to return to the CNMI to attend the pre-trial conference.<\/p>\n
Efraim Atalig also joined in Evelyn Atalig\u2019s motion to postpone the jury trial.<\/p>\n
Banes and Evelyn Atalig\u2019s court-appointed counsel, Steven Pixley, appeared in court yesterday. Assistant U.S. attorney Eric O\u2019Malley, who appeared as counsel for the U.S. government, did not oppose the trial\u2019s postponement.<\/p>\n
The Ataligs have been charged with wire fraud, theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and federal funds theft. Each of them faces a separate charge of false statement.<\/p>\n
They have pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The federal court granted yesterday the request of Rota Mayor Efraim M. Atalig and his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[18026],"class_list":["post-299128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-mayor-atalig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299128","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=299128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}