Members of the federal grand jury yesterday filled the jury box, signaling the start of a criminal case that has put a local businessman on trial for illegal drug-trafficking charges before the US District Court.<\/p>\n
Defendant Leo Sablan Pangelinan has been indicted before the federal grand jury on charges of possession of controlled substances on four counts.<\/p>\n
The charges include conspiracy to posses with intent to distribute crystal metamphetamine, its sale and distribution, and possessing with intent to distribute metamphetamine at different quantities.<\/p>\n
Opposing camps respectively delivered their hard-hitting opening statements in front of the jury.<\/p>\n
Addressing the jurors, Asst. US Attorney John Rice spoke in intricate details of the alleged illegal business operation run by the defendant.<\/p>\n
According to the government prosecutor, Mr. Pangelinan has used his retail shop as a storefront that on the inset actually houses a crystal metamphetamine or “ice” packaging facility.<\/p>\n
The prosecution mentioned two separate incidents in October of last year where customers allegedly trooped to the defendant’s establishment to purchase ice.<\/p>\n
Mr. Rice appealed to jurors to keep an open mind about the pieces of evidence they were about to witness during the course of the trial.<\/p>\n
The government has disclosed plans to present at least two key witnesses on the stand, including a confidential informant hired by the Drug Enforcement Administration Task Force.<\/p>\n
Mr. Pangelinan’s business partner is also anticipated to take to the witness stand to share inside information on the alleged illegal drug operation, according to Mr. Rice.<\/p>\n
The prosecution told jurors it is prepared to divulge before the court other pieces of evidence that would give credence to the defendant’s alleged involvement in the illegal activity.<\/p>\n
Defense lawyer Joey Arriola, in his brief counter statement, warned jurors against taking evidence lightly.<\/p>\n
He impressed upon the jury that cross examination by the defense team is equally important to the direct examination by the prosecution.<\/p>\n
Mr. Arriola also asked jurors to withhold judgment until the trial’s end, where all sets of evidence may have already been presented and examined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Members of the federal grand jury yesterday filled the jury box, signaling the start of a criminal case that has put a local businessman on trial for illegal drug-trafficking charges before the US District Court.<\/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-56741","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\/56741","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=56741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}