Miura’s lawyers ready for hearing, but are considering another delay

Attorney Bruce Berline, one of the counsels of Japanese businessman Kazuyoshi Miura, said yesterday they would talk with the prosecution whether or not to postpone again the hearing on Saipan following Los Angeles Country judge’s announcement he would issue a decision by Sept. 26 on Miura’s motion to dismiss murder and conspiracy charges.

At a press briefing inside his office, Berline said during Friday’s hearing in L.A. Superior Court Judge Steven Van Sicklen placed the motion under advisement and set another hearing for Sept. 26 at 1:30pm.

Berline said Sicklen, however, specifically ordered no briefing by either party and that he will give his ruling at that time.

“The Sept. 26 hearing will be solely for the judge to render his decision in this matter and we go from there. Sept. 26 is kind of a long lay off but there is nothing we can do about that,” he said.

Berline said they don’t know what they are going to do with the scheduled Sept. 12 hearing on Saipan.

The lawyer said he spoke with Miura’s counsel in L.A., Mark Geragos, about the Sept. 12 hearing.

“We will be talking with Mr. Warfield (assistant attorney general Jeffery) about that,” he said.

Berline said Miura is not going anywhere as Judge Sicklen ruled that their client does not need to be present in L.A.

“So until Judge Sicklen issues his order nobody is coming from California to pick him up. So we’ll see. We certainly talk about our options with Mr. Warfield,” he said.

Berline said as of yesterday’s press briefing, due to frequent outages Warfield had failed to submit the CNMI’s government’s response to their petition for habeas corpus.

“If the court wants to go through with the Sept. 12 we don’t have a problem with that. We’ll talk about that in the couple of days and come to a decision whether we want to go forward on the 12th or not,” he added.

The Superior Court postponed many times the hearing and the filing deadline on the petition for habeas corpus following stipulations by Miura’s counsels and the prosecution.

Miura is accused of conspiring to kill his wife, who was shot when they were visiting L.A. in 1981. Miura was convicted of murder in Japan, but the verdict was overturned in 1998 by the country’s high courts.

The 61-year-old Miura was arrested in connection with the murder while on a business trip to Saipan last February. Miura remains in jail as he fights his extradition to LA. from Saipan.