U.S. District Court Judge Alex Munson has declared a mistrial for drug suspect Daniel Atalig after a jury failed to reach a unanimous decision.<\/p>\n
Although they acquitted Atalig of the charge of conspiracy to import approximately 160 grams of ice, the group couldn’t reach a verdict on charges of conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute ice.<\/p>\n
The jury started deliberating last Thursday after a three-day trial.<\/p>\n
According to Assistant US Attorney Gregory Baka, the jury told the court that further deliberation won’t help them reach a unanimous decision.<\/p>\n
Munson set a new trial for Feb. 8, 1999 at 9 a.m. where a new set of jurors will hear the case.<\/p>\n
Baka said the new trial means he will start all over again and will be calling the same set of witnesses.<\/p>\n
Among those who will be called are Atalig’s co-conspirators who testified about his involvement with the drug importation.<\/p>\n
They are spouses Felix and Jacqueline Remoket and Johnny and Rizalinda Remoket.<\/p>\n
The charges against Atalig came as a result of an investigation conducted by the DEA\/CNMI Task Force which received information about the drug shipments made between February and April 24 this year.<\/p>\n
A complaint filed with the court stated that Johnny and Rizalinda have agreed, while in the Philippines in March, to deal with ice here to ease their financial problems.<\/p>\n
Five drug shipments totaling 160 grams of ice made it to the CNMI between those period.<\/p>\n
The last shipment of 20 grams of ice was intercepted by authorities and resulted in the arrest of Atalig and Johnny Remoket.<\/p>\n
Felix, Rizalinda and Johnny have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import ice while Jacqueline pleaded guilty to a felony charge.<\/p>\n
All entered a plea agreement which also required them to testify against Atalig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court Judge Alex Munson has declared a mistrial for drug suspect Daniel Atalig after a jury failed to reach a unanimous decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44736","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}