The motion was filed in the U.S. District Court for the NMI by U.S. Assistant Attorney Kirk Schuler following defense attorney Bruce Berline’s request to send shotgun shells to Canada-based gun expert Liam Hendrikse to prove that his client, Albert Taitano, a customs officer from Rota, charged with violating the U.S. Endangered Species Act, along with two other defendants, did not commit the crime.
“The defense is asking to have its cake and eat it too, all at taxpayers’ expense. Defendants should not be deprived of their own expert to challenge the government’s expert but there must be reasonable limits to their request. Hiring two experts at taxpayers’ expense, one of whom lives in Canada, and then asking the court to compel the government to send its critical evidence unsupervised to Canada, seems to go beyond the reasonable limit,” Schuler said in his motion opposing the defense’s request.
According to the indictment, several shotgun shells were discovered at the poached bat colony in Sumac, Rota.
The shotgun shells were discharged from a Mossberg .410 shotgun found at defendant Division of Fish and Wildlife employee David Santos’ residence and a Remington .410 shotgun found at Taitano’s house.
The third defendant implicated in the case is retired police officer Adrian Mendiola.
The defendants have challenged the U.S. government’s firearms identifications with two arguments — that the firearms identifications are inherently unreliable and therefore inadmissible, and that even if admissible, the government expert made the wrong identifications.
Schuler said Berline emailed him on March 14 asking to have the shotgun shells mailed to Hendrikse at the federal government’s expense.
When Schuler refused, Berline filed a motion to compel the government to send evidence to the consultant to have the shotgun shells be examined by Hendrikse, saying the government must provide the defendant with the “basic tools of an adequate defense” if he cannot otherwise afford to pay them in order to comply with due process and its guarantee of fundamental fairness.
Berline said flying Hendrikse to the U.S. to use its firearm labs is rather costly and inconvenient as he will still have to get a visa to use the facilities.
He said the practical option is to have the empty shells sent to the consultant.
But Schuler said there must be a limit to the defendants’ request.
Schuler said the U.S. government is willing to allow the defense consultant to inspect the shotgun shells at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon.
But the defense turned down the proposal because as a Canadian citizen, the consultant still needs to obtain a work visa.
Schuler said the work visa for the consultant is not the government’s problem and stressed that mailing the shotgun shells to Canada “will not cost less and is not justified in light of concerns of shipping the evidence internationally.”
“Regarding the customs issues, the government never shipped this evidence internationally —defendants’ exhibits all reveal domestic shipping from Guam to Oregon (via USPS in order to stay domestic) from Oregon to Hawaii (via FedEx domestic shipping). Thus, there were no international customs issues,” he added.
