By Gina Tabonares
Variety News Staff

WITH the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting the petition of Democratic gubernatorial candidates Robert Underwood and Frank Aguon Jr., the question that remains is: Why?
The U.S. Supreme Court denied without a comment the petition filed by the Underwood-Aguon team asking the justices to review a certiorari whether overvotes should have been counted toward the majority votes on the last local election.
The petition was admitted to the Supreme Court Bar two weeks ago but on Monday, the Underwood-Aguon team’s certiorari was put in an order list of rejected cases.
A denial of certiorari, according to a legal practitioner who requested anonymity, does not reflect the court’s view either as to the merits of the case or as to its jurisdiction to hear the matter.
The lawyer told Variety that a denial order simply expresses the court’s discretionary refusal to give any kind of appellate review and means nothing more than that “this court has refused to take the case” or that “fewer than four members of the court deemed it desirable to review a decision of the lower court.”
The Democratic gubernatorial team filed its first petition in the Guam Supreme Court days after the Nov. 2006 election.
The local court, however, dismissed the petition, prompting the Underwood-Aguon team to elevate their case to the highest tribunal.
“There can be a multitude of reasons that motivate the nine justices to vote to deny certiorari, many of which may have no bearing on the correctness of the lower court decision,” the lawyer added.
Thousands of cases and petitions are thrown out by the justices who normally issue an order list of accepted, rejected and admitted cases every Monday morning.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy earlier confirmed this and told Guam Bar members during his 2006 visit to the island that they receive at least 9,000 petitions a year which they reduce to 500 on a “discuss” list.
From the discuss list, Justice Kennedy said the justices must evaluate more than 130 petitions seeking review of judgments of state and federal courts to determine which cases are to be granted full review with oral arguments by attorneys.
Correcting lawyers’ impression that a petition has a better chance if it stresses errors of judgment, the third most senior justice of the U.S. Supreme Court said justices take cases not because they were decided wrongly but because their guidance would be helpful in establishing justice.