Chief Public Defender Douglas Hartig says the revised draft of House Bill 23-33, or the Keisha King Bail Reform Act, is a step in the wrong direction for the CNMI in terms of reforming the justice system. <\/p>\n
He reiterated in an interview that he opposes the Keisha King Bail Reform Act as drafted because it negates the presumption of innocence. \u201c[This bill] violates the right to reasonable bail, which is guaranteed by both the United States and the CNMI constitutions. There\u2019s the belief that the bill would stop or avoid certain types of crime, but we just don\u2019t see it that way at all. We think it\u2019s very unfair and quite possibly unconstitutional and there\u2019s just no need for it. It doesn\u2019t address any currently existing problem here in any fair or balanced manner,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The Office of the Attorney General supports the bill. <\/p>\n
Hartig explained that this bill would ultimately take away a court\u2019s authority to look over the facts when it comes to repeat offenders, and its capacity to use its discretion in deciding whether the individual will be granted bail or not. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe way things are supposed to work, and it does work, is that the judge has discretion. He can listen to facts from both the prosecution\u2019s side and the defense\u2019s side and he can decide whether a person is a risk. The problem here is when you start to use broad terms like domestic violence. We hear domestic violence and we think of partners who beat each other silly. But this isn\u2019t always the case. This term also includes family trespassing, so you don\u2019t get out on bail in that situation if there was a conviction from years and years ago. It doesn\u2019t matter how long ago,\u201d said Hartig. \u201cThat\u2019s just one example. Be it an extreme example, but those facts could occur. But the point is, a judge should be able to look at that kind of case and say whether they should be released to a third-party custodian or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Overall, Hartig says that his opposition comes from the OPD\u2019s duty to protect the rights of everyone, whether they are merely accused of a crime or did commit a crime. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur opposition isn\u2019t about letting hardened criminals out on bail to offend again. That\u2019s not what defense lawyers do. We want to protect rights of people who were accused of crime falsely, unjustly, or righteously. It\u2019s the rights that we are protecting. The judge should have the ability to do the same thing. He should have the ability to agree with us or not agree with us. Under this bill, the judge couldn\u2019t do that, it takes away the judge\u2019s discretion and that\u2019s an issue,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
When asked what he thought about the inspiration behind the bill, Keisha King, (the woman who was taken hostage and killed in 2020 by her boyfriend, Gordon Castro, a repeat offender who was out on bail) Hartig said the bigger issue of that incident is not being addressed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI would say that the problem in that case\u2014that nobody wants to talk about\u2014is that the problem there was you had an individual who had mental health issues, drug addiction, and had access to a service-issued firearm. No one is talking about gun control, no one\u2019s talking about regulations within agencies that have firearms, and there\u2019s your issue. This bill is not really tailored toward that situation,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chief Public Defender Douglas Hartig says the revised draft of House Bill 23-33, or the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":393240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-393445","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\/393445","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=393445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}