By Gina Tabonares
Variety News Staff

FIRST Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Strand asked the federal court to dismiss the motion of former Senator William “Willy” Flores to vacate his sentence, saying that visiting U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup acted appropriately during Flores’s sentencing.
In a reply to Flores’s motion to vacate his sentence, Strand stated that the former senator’s motion is totally without merit and has insufficient grounds to vacate his sentence.
Flores was sentenced on Oct. 27, 2005 after pleading guilty to money laundering charges filed against him and former chief of staff Gil Shinohara.
He started serving his eight months incarceration in the Honolulu Detention Facility on April 14 but filed a motion to vacate his sentence, alleging that Judge Alsup was biased and prejudiced when he congratulated a co-conspirator’s defense lawyer for putting him on trial instead of the co-conspirator.
Strand, however, contended that any remark that the trial judge may have made regarding the defense putting Flores on trial was neither wrongful nor inappropriate as being underserved or based on information improperly obtained.
“Congratulating the defense attorney on an outstanding performance is not of itself a comment on the judge’s attitude toward Flores, but only on the tactics and abilities of the lawyer,” Strand said.
Strand further stated that Flores’s motion fails on the part of the definition of bias and prejudice “since Flores’s motion does not contain any facts indicating how the remark might demonstrate an undeserved judicial attitude toward him.”
The federal prosecutor added that the alleged remark of the judge makes it clear that the trial judge was commenting on matters that had occurred before him in the two trials in which Flores had testified against his co-conspirator.
“Any knowledge that prompted the remark was not extrajudicial or otherwise improperly obtained,” Strand continued.
Flores, as part of his plea agreement, cooperated with federal authorities and testified against Shinohara and Takahisa Goto, who were sentenced in federal court for concocting a scheme to defraud the Bank of Guam of some $300,000.