“Without prejudice” means the prosecution can re-file the case.
The motion to dismiss was filed by the Attorney General’s Office that earlier informed the court that it was ready to proceed with the jury trial next week.
Although the burden is not on the commonwealth to show that dismissal would be in the public interest, Govendo ruled the court is aware of the commonwealth’s reasons for not wanting to go to trial.
“The reasons are failure to send [the victim’s] swab out for analysis and lack of a physician to testify since the alleged victim’s treating physician has left the island. Both of these reasons are lacking in substance. Everyone living on Saipan should know that doctors, like assistant attorneys general, come and go. When a prosecutor gets a trial date, the first phone call should be to the doctor to make sure that the doctor will be on island or to line up an alternative. When a swab is taken, it should immediately be sent off-island for analysis. Both of these things could have been done expeditiously,” Govendo said in his five-page order.
He said he cannot dismiss the case with prejudice “because it is still relatively young. If this was a two-year-old case, the outcome would be different.”
Citing the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Govendo said, “A lawyer has a duty, both to client and to the legal system, to pursue the matter on behalf of the client despite opposition, obstruction, and personal inconvenience to the lawyer. This duty requires the lawyer to get control of his or her workload so that each mater can be handled adequately.”
He said Assistant Attorneys General Shelli Neal and Tiberius Mocanu, the prosecutors, “have been lax in their preparation and they have breached this duty.”
He said “if it happens again, there will be sanctions applied to them.”
Santos, who is represented by Assistant Public Defender Matthew Meyer, has denied the charges of sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree and disturbing the peace of the then-8-year-old victim.
