BECAUSE Price Shoiter has received clemency from the former governor and has been removed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from the CNMI, the federal court granted the Office of the Attorney General’s motion to dismiss his lawsuit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
Shoiter sued the Department of Corrections’ current and former officials, alleging denial of adequate medical care.
But as a result of Shoiter’s having been released from custody and based on the representations of counsel and the pleadings on file, Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona of the District Court for the NMI granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss.
In an order on June 23, the judge also denied the plaintiff’s request for attorney’s fees.
She likewise denied as moot the motion to compel, and the defendant’s motion for a protective order.
The court, however, extended the discovery cutoff and allowed the plaintiff to serve a subpoena on the Department of Corrections on or before June 30 if the plaintiff chooses to do so.
The CNMI government, represented by Assistant Attorneys General Leslie Healer and Veena Seelam, has asked the court to dismiss all the claims against the official capacity defendants.
Attorney Michael Dotts, who represents Shoiter, previously requested the federal court to enforce the settlement agreement and re-open the proceedings in his client’s lawsuit against the Department of Corrections.
Dotts said the agreement provided that in the event that clemency was denied by the governor, the case would be put back on the trial calendar.
Shoiter, a 74-year-old Chuukese national, was sentenced in 2016 to 10 years in prison for sexually abusing a 7-year-old girl.
According to the CNMI government’s motion to dismiss, “Shoiter was in DOC custody beginning on Nov. 15, 2015. On January 6, 2023, then-Governor [Ralph DLG Torres] of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands issued an Executive Grant of Clemency to Shoiter. Shoiter’s sentence was commuted to time served subject to the condition that Shoiter …is taken into custody by the United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement and subsequently removed from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.”
On May 6, 2023, Shoiter was released to ICE, which “removed Shoiter from the CNMI. Shoiter is no longer in the custody of the Department of Corrections, and therefore, all claims against the official capacity defendant for injunctive or declaratory relief are now moot,” the CNMI government added.
In Feb. 2022, the federal court granted Shoiter’s request to set aside the previous dismissal order entered by the court in his case after then-Governor Torres denied the inmate’s application for conditional clemency.
According to his lawyer, under a settlement agreement, Shoiter, among other things, was to receive conditional clemency, heart surgery and knee surgery before a certain deadline, and payment to his counsel of a lump sum amount to cover his damages.
The settlement agreement also provided that, in the event that clemency was denied by the governor, the case would be put back on the trial calendar.
