AFTER Superior Court Associate Justice Theresa Kim-Tenorio declared a mistrial in the jury trial of two men accused of raping a drunk woman two years ago, the jury was released and a new trial date is anticipated for March 2021.
Richmond Keybond, 20, and Joseph Saimon, 44, are the defendants in the case, who were arrested in 2018 with Christopher Saimon, 40, and the now-deceased Romeo Saimon.
The alleged victim is the former girlfriend of Joseph.
Romeo took his own life last year, and Christopher was found to be incompetent to stand trial because of a mental disability, so both cases were dismissed.
Keybond is represented by attorney Cong Nie, while Joseph is represented by Assistant Public Defenders Jean Pierre Nogues and Emily Thomsen.
The prosecutors are Assistant Attorneys General Coleen St. Clair and Heather Barcinas.
On Monday, Nie said he would be filing a motion to dismiss the case against his client.
Nogues, for his part, reiterated his motion for all notes pertaining to the case to be submitted to the court.
The evidence in the trial, including a kitchen knife with a grey sheath that was allegedly used by Joseph to threaten the alleged victim, remains in the custody of the court unless there is no suitable evidence locker for it to be stored, in which case the chain of custody would revert to the Department of Public Safety.
Counsels will be negotiating a change of plea plea agreement prior to the scheduled status conference on January 5.
Asked for comment, Nogues said that he thinks that Judge Kim-Tenorio made the right decision in declaring a mistrial.
“The question of whether or not certain pieces of evidence will be admitted into a trial where it can have an effect on the trial makes it unfair to the defendant. Every defendant has a right to a fair trial,” he said.
He added, “We agreed that there was an issue here and the court agreed that there was a risk of that, and so that’s why she declared a mistrial, so we’ll see how things go from here… We are reset for January 5, so we’ll take it from there.”
Regarding the motion to dismiss the case against Keybond, Nogues said that he was just informed of the motion on Monday morning and needs to look into it to further to determine whether or not the defense for Saimon will also make a similar motion.
Nie and St. Clair declined to comment.
Richmond Keybond
Joseph Saimon
