CHIEF Judge Ramona V. Manglona of the District Court for the NMI has denied Bonifacio “Boni” Sagana’s motion for a new trial.
Judge Manglona found that the voir dire conducted in the case did not violate Sagana’s Sixth Amendment right to a trial by an impartial jury.
According to an online legal dictionary, voir dire (pronounced “vwahr deer”) is a process used to determine the admissibility of evidence or the suitability of a juror.
“Sagana has not met his burden to demonstrate the need for a new trial as the interest of justice does not require such. For these reasons, the court denies Sagana’s motion for a new trial,” the judge said.
Sagana was recently sentenced by the federal court to serve 24 months in prison for his involvement in a scheme to produce fraudulent CNMI driver’s licenses.
On July 19, 2023, a jury found him guilty of conspiring with Bernadita Zata in producing a fraudulent CNMI driver’s license.
Citing “bad publicity,” Sagana, through his attorney Richard Miller, asked the federal court for a new trial.
Miller said 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.”
Miller said the voir dire conducted was insufficient and “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.”
Prior to trial, Sagana filed under seal pursuant to the parties’ request, a motion in limine to exclude evidence of his relocation to Wisconsin.
A motion in limine is “a legal motion made by a party…before or during the trial requesting the court to rule on the admissibility of certain evidence.”
The U.S. government sought to introduce evidence of Sagana’s relocation to Wisconsin as evidence of consciousness of guilt.
Ultimately, the court granted Sagana’s motion in limine to exclude evidence of his relocation to Wisconsin such that the U.S. government was precluded from introducing evidence of Sagana’s relocation to Wisconsin as evidence of consciousness of guilt.
Judge Manglona said while the court rejected Sagana’s “request for each party to voir dire the jury panel for one hour each, the parties provided proposed voir dire questions, which the court adopted in large part.”
“The seven [news] articles written about Sagana here do not constitute a barrage, even within the CNMI. Therefore, pretrial publicity was not so great to necessitate the parties’ individualized examinations of each prospective juror,” Judge Manglona said.
She also noted that Sagana’s attorneys did not request further voir dire questions that the court did not cover.
Moreover, none of the “five panelists with prior knowledge of the case through the media had formed an opinion about Defendant’s guilt or innocence, or were selected to serve on the jury,” the judge said.
