The Guam Supreme Court has yet to appoint a judge to hear former governor Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 criminal case, which is set for trial on June 5. <\/p>\n
The Guam Supreme Court, which has been asked to appoint another Guam judge to preside over the criminal case against Torres, has yet to announce a replacement for Guam Superior Court judge Alberto Tolentino, who recently recused himself from the case.<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune learned that the CNMI Supreme Court has asked the Guam Supreme court to appoint a replacement for Tolentino to ensure that a conflict-free judge is appointed to preside over the high-profile trial. <\/p>\n
Last April 19, Tolentino issued what\u2019s referred to as a sua sponte order recusing himself. He did not elaborate but noted that the recusal is due to ongoing health issues.<\/p>\n
The former governor\u2019s jury trial is set to start on June 5, 2023.<\/p>\n
Tolentino\u2019s recusal left the Torres case without a judge once again as Tolentino was only appointed by the Supreme Court because all the CNMI\u2019s judges recused themselves from hearing the case almost immediately after it was filed.<\/p>\n
The OA Office of the Attorney General has charged Torres with 12 counts of misconduct in public office and one count of theft relating to the issuance of airline tickets for business class, first class, or other premium class travel for himself and\/or his wife.<\/p>\n
A little over a week prior to Tolentino\u2019s recusal, Torres\u2019 defense team filed two motions for reconsideration: a reconsideration of the court\u2019s previous decision to deny dismissal of the case, and reconsideration of the court\u2019s decision denying the team\u2019s request to disqualify the OAG from prosecuting this case.<\/p>\n
The prosecution has filed two separate motions opposing both motions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Guam Supreme Court has yet to appoint a judge to hear former governor Ralph…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":390170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-390169","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\/390169","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=390169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}