BONIFACIO “Boni” Sagana has asked the federal court to hold a new trial.
Sagana, according to the U.S. government, conspired with Bernadita Zata in producing a fake CNMI driver’s license. On July 19, 2023, jurors found Sagana guilty of conspiracy to unlawfully produce an identification document.
On Wednesday, his attorney, Richard Miller, filed a motion for a new trial “in the interest of justice, pursuant to Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure,” saying that Sagana’s “Sixth Amendment right to trial by an impartial jury was violated by pervasive and false pretrial publicity, in this small community of the Northern Mariana Islands, that Mr. Sagana had fled Saipan before he could be arrested.”
According to Miller, in January 2021, Sagana received an advance parole and employment authorization from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, allowing him to live and work anywhere in the United States.
On June 14, 2021, he left Saipan and flew to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he got a job in a hotel.
On Jan. 31, 2022, a grand jury indicted Sagana and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was arrested in Green Bay on May 12, 2022, released on bond and permitted to return to Saipan voluntarily, without an escort by the U.S. Marshal.
In compliance with his release conditions, Sagana flew back to Saipan and appeared in federal court for arraignment on Aug. 2, 2022.
Miller said the “two widely circulated newspapers” in the CNMI — Saipan Tribune and Marianas Variety — “covered the Sagana case extensively for more than a year. As background information for these news stories, the two papers frequently repeated the falsehood that Mr. Sagana fled Saipan before he could be arrested.”
Miller also cited a story from KSPN2 that appeared on the morning of jury selection. He added that KSPN2 is the only local television station that broadcasts news in the CNMI.
Miller said KSPN2 led its 6 p.m. newscast with this story:
“Jury trial for a man accused of illegally producing fake CNMI driver’s licenses will begin tomorrow. Jury selection starts tomorrow at the U.S. District Court for the trial of Bonifacio Vitug Sagana, who has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to unlawfully produce an identification document…. An arrest warrant was issued by Judge Kennedy in January of 2022, but Sagana fled to the States before he could be arrested.”
Miller said because of “extensive adverse publicity and public comment about the upcoming trial — comments often targeted at Mr. Sagana’s Filipino nationality — Mr. Sagana moved in limine for the court to reserve time for counsel for each party to voir dire prospective jurors.”
But he said the court, “although recognizing the high publicity of this trial in this small community,” denied the motion.
“Mr. Sagana also moved in limine to deny the [U.S.] Government a flight instruction, and the Court granted this motion. However, the Court’s Memorandum Decision was issued under seal and therefore could not be picked up by the media to correct the misconception that Mr. Sagana had fled Saipan to avoid arrest,” Miller said.
“Shortly after the July 5 newscast repeated the falsehood about flight from arrest, Mr. Sagana filed a request for a chambers conference prior to jury selection to address possible tainting of the jury pool. The Court granted the request. At the conference, defense counsel questioned whether it was possible to have an impartial jury where two of the three major news outlets had run stories immediately prior to jury selection perpetuating the falsehood that Mr. Sagana had fled before authorities could arrest him. The court stated that it would question prospective jurors about pretrial publicity and unseal the Memorandum Decision once the jury was impaneled, giving the press the opportunity to self-correct before opening statements on July 17.”
During the trial, the court questioned a handful of jurors individually, but the inquiry never focused on the current news stories that Sagana had fled to avoid arrest, Miller said.
“The Court’s questioning left it to the prospective jurors to assess their own impartiality and did not probe beyond asking if they had read or heard anything about the case. The Court did not ask each prospective juror whether they had heard or read any news about the case but depended on the jurors themselves to raise their hands. It is impossible to know how many…out of shyness or exhaustion, simply chose not to speak up. Moreover, the one allegation from news reports that stuck in the responsive jurors’ minds was that he was apprehended in Wisconsin and had to be brought back to the CNMI. Nothing about the charge against Mr. Sagana, or about the alleged offense conduct, but only the allegation of flight from arrest. Yet the Court did not inquire deeply into this matter,” Miller said.
“What is most troubling about the local media’s pretrial coverage is that it shows pervasive, pro-prosecution media bias,” he added.
“The key ‘fact’ that the media kept repeating was Mr. Sagana’s supposed flight from arrest, even though he left Saipan more than six months before an arrest warrant was issued,” Miller said.
“The local Saipan media chose to tell readers, over and over again, that Mr. Sagana fled before he could be arrested. For the media, this was the key fact to remind readers who Mr. Sagana is. It created a verbal meme to describe him: The Man Who Fled Before He Could Be Arrested,” he added,
“Given the repeated prejudicial misstatements in the press — including and most importantly on the eve of jury selection — that Mr. Sagana had fled Saipan before he could be arrested, a more searching inquiry into the effects of pretrial publicity in the small CNMI community was necessary to ensure a fair trial by an impartial jury,” Miller said.
In his closing remarks during the trial, the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Albert Flores Jr., told jurors: “What is crystal clear, is the clear evidence from the witnesses, what they said. Ms. Zata said, ‘I paid Sagana to help get a license because I did not have [immigration] status.’ There is no mistake about that — that is the crime. The crime that Sagana is guilty of conspiring with Ms. Zata, and she has given clear testimony about that in detail…. The crime is that he agreed to help Ms. Zata at [the Bureau of Motor Vehicles] by submitting a driver’s license application. You don’t need an expert to tell you that you have to have immigration status to get a license.”
The United States Courthouse in Gualo Rai, Saipan.
Boni Sagana
