Atalig bid to not include other trips in trial under advisement

A bid by Rota Mayor Efraim M. Atalig to not include evidence relating to three other trips has trial has been placed under advisement.

U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona said Friday she will issue a written decision.

She set a pretrial conference for May 8, 2019, and that she will not entertain any requests for telephonic appearances at the conference.

The trial will start on June 4.

At the hearing last Friday, David Banes and Steven Pixley, the court-appointed counsels for mayor Atalig and his girlfriend, Evelyn Atalig, asked that their clients be excused for the hearing.

Manglona accepted the waivers, stating she just received Evelyn Atalig’s joinder in the mayor’s motion to exclude evidence.

In mayor Atalig’s motion, Banes pointed out that each of the five trips in which the Ataligs have been charged can be presented to the jury at the trial without referencing any other trips. He described the U.S. government’s bid to cite the other three trips as a “shotgun approach,” that the U.S. government not met its burden of proof that those three other trips are bad acts on the part of the Ataligs.

Banes conceded that the mayor indeed went on those five trips, but that he attended all trips for legitimate purposes.

He questioned the prosecution’s need to introduce evidence about the three additional trips since the Ataligs were not charged for those trips.

Banes argued that evidence of the mayor’s three additional trips simply does not prove what the U.S. government wants to prove in the indictment against the mayor and, to the contrary, it will possibly only confuse the jury.

He said the prosecution has difficulties articulating a logical claim linking it to the charges.

The defense counsel said evidence of the three additional trips, if offered by the prosecution, would be highly prejudicial.

Banes said the U.S. government has failed to show that the three additional trips can be characterized as part of the same scheme.

He said evidence of the three additional trips does not tend to prove a modus operandi.

In the U.S. government’s opposition to the motion, assistant U.S. attorney Eric O’Malley said the investigation in this case began when they learned about the mayor’s trip to Guam that raised a red flag.

He said they then discovered four more trips.

O’Malley said in those five trips, mayor Atalig, who has a signatory authority in Travel Authorizations, evaded standard procedures.

O’Malley said the Finance Department had not approved those trips.

He said three of those five trips need Finance’s approval.

At the hearing, the prosecution called to the stand Office of the Public Auditor investigator Travis Hurst, who testified about all of Mayor Atalig’s nine trips.

O’Malley said the commonalities of those trips was the element of deception. “If it happens over and over and over again, it’s a scheme,” the prosecutor said.

The Ataligs are indicted on five corruption charges for arranging CNMI government-funded trips to California, Palau, Guam, and Saipan under allegedly fraudulent pretenses. The defendants pleaded not guilty.