Villagomez appeared with his attorneys Leilani V. Lujan and David J. Lujan. James Santos’s attorney is Victorino DLG. Torres while Joaquina Santos is represented by Ramon K. Quichocho.
The federal government was represented by U.S. Attorney Eric S. O’Malley.
The defendants’ lawyers argued that the indictment in the case must be dismissed because of “prosecutorial overreaching.”
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Alex R. Munson said the court may dismiss an indictment as an exercise of its inherent supervisory power or to protect a defendant’s due process rights “when the grand jury’s function has been so subverted as to compromise the integrity of the judicial process.”
Munson said the defendants initially argued that the independence of the grand jury was compromised because the assistant U.S. attorney engaged in unrecorded discussions with the grand jurors regarding the evidence and/or witnesses, which is a violation of a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure.
The defendants maintained that under the law, all grand jury proceedings, except deliberation and voting, should be recorded.
But Munson said that at the hearing, the prosecution clarified that the transcripts given to the defense were only excerpts of the proceedings and that the entire proceedings were recorded.
The defendants argued that even if the entire proceedings were recorded, the federal government still may have engaged in prosecutorial overreaching because it may have failed to ask the questions that the jurors wanted answered; it may have convinced the jurors not to ask questions the jurors wanted answered; or it may have distorted the juror’s questions.
The defendants asked the court to turn over the grand jury proceedings in their entirety.
Munson stated that the defendants have not pointed to any particular need that outweighs the policy of the grand jury secrecy.
He said “the need to ensure that the government did not overreach is not a particular need and has not been substantiated by anything other than speculation that the government may have engaged in improprieties.”
Munson said the court ordered all the transcripts to be delivered for review.
He said the court reviewed both the transcripts that were given to the defense as well.
“The court finds that the record is complete and does not indicate any prosecutorial overreaching,” Munson said.
The court denied the motion of the defendants to disclose the entire grand jury proceedings because “they have not produced more than unsubstantiated assertions of improprieties in the proceedings.”
“Neither have they presented any argument that the United States demonstrated any misconduct that would be a ground to dismiss the indictment,” the court added.
