The Attorney General Office agreed yesterday to drop the second-degree murder charge against the suspect in the death of Luciano Ortiz, provided that a non-trial agreement is reached on or before Sept. 21 this year.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the prosecution, represented by assistant attorney general Phil Tydingco, agreed during yesterday\u2019s preliminary hearing that the second-degree charge against Edgardo Palma would be changed to voluntary manslaughter, which has a lower maximum sentence of 10 years. Manslaughter is defined as killing a human being without preconceived malice.<\/p>\n
This developed after Palma, through assistant public defender Jennifer Ahnsted, offered to waive his right to preliminary hearing on the second-degree charge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn exchange, the Commonwealth agreed that we would dismiss the second-degree murder charge without prejudice,\u201d said Tydingco.<\/p>\n
The parties\u2019 agreement before Superior Court associate judge Kenneth Govendo provides that, if a plea agreement is not reached by Sept. 21, then the government has the right to re-file on that day the second-degree murder charge against Palma.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we reach an agreement, he will be changing his plea on Sept. 24 but if we don\u2019t then we will be re-filing the case and we will be continuing the preliminary hearing on the second degree murder charge on Sept. 24,\u201d Tydingco said. <\/p>\n
Palma, who was arrested and charged over the mauling and eventual death of hotel painter Luciano Ortiz, still has the right to challenge the three other criminal charges that he faces: assault and battery, aggravated assault and battery, and disturbing the peace. <\/p>\n
Friends and relatives of Palma, who attended yesterday\u2019s preliminary hearing, were in tears as they met Palma in court.<\/p>\n
Palma\u2019s supporters had the chance to hug and kiss him on his way out from the court yesterday noon.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh look at him, he\u2019s lost lots of weight. I pity him,\u201d said a woman.<\/p>\n
Palma\u2019s friend, Bogs Colegio, said he was extremely happy to see him again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought that we would meet face to face! He [Palma] is like my brother. We treat each other as brothers. I was so distressed when I learned about what happened,\u201d he said. He said he encouraged Palma \u201cto be strong and not give up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yesterday\u2019s hearing was also attended by some of Ortiz\u2019 officemates. \u201cHe [Ortiz] was a very quiet and kind person,\u201d said one, who declined to be identified.<\/p>\n
Ortiz, who was allegedly mauled by Palma over a woman, died in the early hours of Aug. 18 while under treatment at the Commonwealth Health Center. Ortiz had been hooked to a life support system from the time he was brought to CHC on Aug. 13. <\/p>\n
Initial investigation showed that Ortiz and Palma had a heated altercation at the parking lot of the Dai-Ichi Hotel Saipan Beach on Aug. 13. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Attorney General Office agreed yesterday to drop the second-degree murder charge against the suspect in the death of Luciano Ortiz, provided that a non-trial agreement is reached on or before Sept. 21 this year.<\/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-83686","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\/83686","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=83686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}