The defense team of former governor Ralph DLG Torres argues that the prosecution has failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the former governor had the intent to commit acts that constitute misconduct in public office. <\/p>\n
In its the motion for reconsideration of the order denying defendant\u2019s motion to dismiss for failure to allege essential mens rea, or intent, the defense told the media through an official statement that Torres denies criminal intent and the prosecution has failed to prove otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Office of the Attorney General must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Torres had the intent to commit the act, and did in fact commit the acts, that constitute the crime of misconduct in public office. This intent is called mens rea. For the travel at issue here, Mr. Torres travelled on behalf of the government and for a government purpose and denies having any criminal intent,\u201d the defense told the media. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe failure to clearly provide the mens rea, or the intent, is a violation of the Constitution, laws and case laws. Therefore, the team is requesting the court to reconsider its position and further, to provide clear guidance what mens rea the Commonwealth must prove in the case against Mr. Torres,\u201d the defense further stated. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the defense team also stated in their public statement that the attorneys employed by the Office of the Attorney General are not in compliance with the Model Rules of Professional Conduct as held by the CNMI Supreme Court in various other cases. <\/p>\n
Torres\u2019 team of lawyers, in a statement to the media, said they want the Superior Court to hold that the attorneys employed by the OAG be subject to and in compliance with the Model Rules of Professional Conduct as held by the CNMI Supreme Court in various other cases.<\/p>\n
The defense claims that multiple \u201cfacts\u201d prove that the Office of the Attorney General did not comply with the MRPC, like the \u201cfact\u201d that Attorney General Edward Manibusan, the complainant in this case, was not \u201cscreened\u201d or \u201cwalled off\u201d from the case. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe team\u2019s position has always been that the attorney general was the former governor\u2019s attorney responsible for providing him with legal guidance. As such, the AG cannot represent a client, and then turn around and prosecute that same client right after. However, the OAG\u2019s position is that AG Manibusan does not have to be disqualified because he has been \u2018screened\u2019 out of this case and is not involved in any way,\u201d the defense stated. \u201cDuring the hearing to disqualify the OAG from prosecuting this case, the prosecutors and AG Manibusan represented to the court that AG Manibusan was \u2018walled off\u2019 from the case because he was Mr. Torres\u2019 attorney when he was governor. As such, the court denied the team\u2019s request to disqualify the OAG from prosecuting this case based on the assurances that the OAG had a screen in place, whereby only Mr. Robert Glass and Mr. Steve Kessel, the attorneys prosecuting this case, had access to the case file.\u201d <\/p>\n
However, the team said one of the \u201cfacts\u201d proving incompliance was Manibusan personally hiring special prosecutor James Kingman. <\/p>\n
\u201cRecently, the OAG hired a special prosecutor to assist in the prosecution of Mr. Torres. It was AG Manibusan who negotiated the agreement for legal services with the special prosecutor. It was also AG Manibusan who instructed Department of Finance to process and release the special prosecutor\u2019s retainer paid for by public funds. In addition, the special prosecutor is supposed to report directly to AG Manibusan. These facts, and more, show that AG Manibusan is not screened off the case,\u201d the team stated. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The defense team of former governor Ralph DLG Torres argues that the prosecution has failed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":389601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389600","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}