SHUO Qiu, alias Ike, a defendant in an ongoing drug case in the District Court of NMI, “rejoiced” in the untimely death of the Department of Public Safety police officer who was managing the defendant’s cooperation with the authorities, according to Shawn N. Anderson, U.S. attorney for the districts of Guam and the NMI.
This was “the most glaring evidence of defendant’s insincerity,” he added in a motion in limine to preclude public-authority defense.
According to an online legal dictionary, a motion in limine is “a procedural mechanism that allows litigators to seek to exclude certain evidence from being presented to a jury.”
Anderson said on three occasions in Nov. 2022, the defendant “rejoiced in the untimely death of the late DPS police officer Jackson Davis.”
Davis died on Oct. 18, 2022, while scuba diving in Laolao Bay.
Anderson said Davis was the lead case agent responsible for managing Qiu’s cooperation with the DPS Drug Enforcement Task Force.
The U.S. attorney said Qiu “seeks to exploit” Davis’s death “by casting blame, by attacking the credibility of a law enforcement officer who cannot defend himself….”
Anderson stated that during a call on Nov. 8, 2022, Qiu “expressed excitement that his lawyer informed him of the death of Davis.”
Anderson said the defendant “asserts [that] with the death of Davis, he can now write down everything he did for the counter-narcotics team…since the fat guy is dead, it’s a case where dead men tell no tales.”
Anderson said on the same day, in a phone call to the defendant’s father, Qiu stated that his attorney came to see him in jail “with good news.”
According to Anderson, Qiu stated that the “fat guy from my counter-narcotics team…the boss…the policeman I worked with…drowned a few days ago while scuba diving.”
Anderson further quoted Qiu as saying, “It is a good thing that he drowned.”
Further, “the defendant’s attorney asked him, the defendant, to write everything down and ‘just say all the things I did were his orders.’ ”
The defendant “then went on to say, ‘Now that he is dead, he couldn’t say I did this or that…. As long as I write it down and present it to the court,’ ” Anderson said.
On Nov. 18, 2022, he said Qiu made another call in which the defendant “relished in the fact that Davis died, saying that Davis ‘died and can’t prove anything. I will put everything on [expletive] him.’ ”
Anderson said these phone calls “make clear that defendant’s claim of public authority is insincere.”
Moreover, the defendant “did not act on behalf of any law enforcement agency when he committed the alleged offenses.”
Qiu was arrested in a hotel room by U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency operatives on Jan. 12, 2022. Seized from him were 1.6 pounds of methamphetamine, two handguns with ammunition and an undetermined amount of cash.
District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona has scheduled Qiu’s trial for April 25, at 10 a.m., after denying his request to suppress and exclude the evidence obtained by the authorities during his arrest.
On Monday, Anderson filed the limine motion “to preclude the defendant from asserting a public authority defense at trial in this case.”
He stated that defendant “should not be allowed to make this affirmative defense at trial because he has not comported with Fed. R. Crim. P. Rule 12.3 to assert such defense.”
Further, defendant “cannot make a prima facie case that he acted ‘on behalf of any law enforcement agency’ when he committed the alleged offenses of his indictment, nor did anyone authorize or have the authority to authorize the defendant to violate law.”
For these reasons, Anderson asked the court to “preclude [the] defendant from asserting a public authority defense in trial.”
