‘San Diego ruling will have big impact on Miura case’

The Saipan legal team of Japanese businessman Kazuyoshi Miura yesterday expressed belief that the San Diego court’s double jeopardy ruling last week will have a strong impact on Miura’s murder case.

In an interview with [I]Saipan Tribune[/I], attorney William Fitzgerald, one of Miura’s three Saipan lawyers, said it was a decision from the same San Diego Superior Court, so other judges don’t necessarily have to follow it, like decisions made by the Supreme Court.

“But usually if the reasoning is sound, the judge will pretty much…try to be consistent,” Fitzgerald pointed out.

The lawyer said he read the San Diego court decision, which according to him, “sounds exactly like our case.”

On Friday, the San Diego Superior Court dismissed a murder charge against Celestino Mendez Martinez who had already served a sentence in Mexico for murdering his wife. The court cited the principle of avoiding double jeopardy, in which a person may not be tried twice over the same crime.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun report, Martinez was convicted of murder in Mexico, having fled there after killing his wife in the U.S. 20 years ago.

Martinez was released on parole in 1994 after serving only six years of an 11-year sentence. He was reportedly re-arrested in connection with the murder after he re-entered the U.S.

Because there are many cases of people committing crimes in the U.S. fleeing to Mexico, and then going back into the U.S., the California Legislature revised the law in 2004 to allow prosecutors in the state to try people with crimes even if they have already been convicted abroad, the [I]Yomiuri Shimbun[/I] report said.

The San Diego court ruled that because the decision in Mexico on Martinez’s case came before the revision of the state law, the indictment was invalid because “it infringes the principle that laws must not be applied retroactively.”

Fitzgerald said the San Diego decision could have been taken from the motion filed by Miura’s California counsel, attorney Mark J. Geragos.

“He [Geragos] made the same points that the judge in this case is using,” Fitzgerald noted.

“We had a guy [Martinez] who killed his wife, ran off to Mexico, was tried and convicted in Mexico and served his sentence, got out and went back to the states. And they want to try and put the same crime back,” Fitzgerald said.

The lawyer said that because California changed the law in 2004, if that crime happens today, the government could prosecute Martinez.

Fitzgerald said the prosecution, however, can’t apply the statute retroactively because it will violate the Constitution.

Fitzgerald said their legal team can’t cite the San Diego ruling in the Martinez case, because that matter has to be brought in California instead.

“The problem here is we’re sister states, so to speak. We can’t really stick our nose into the business of California. It’s up to them,” he said.

The 60-year-old Miura was arrested by Saipan authorities at the Saipan International Airport on Feb. 22 in connection with the murder of his wife, Kazumi Miura, in Los Angeles in 1981. Miura had already been convicted in Japan in 1994 of the crime. The verdict, however, was overturned by Japan’s high court 10 years ago.