38 charges vs Torres withdrawn

James Robert Kingman

The lawyer prosecuting the case against former governor Ralph DLG Torres, assistant attorney general James R. Kingman, has withdrawn the 38 additional charges he wanted to file against Torres, citing the judge’s decision to quash the prosecution’s subpoena for Torres’ Bank of Guam records.

In a motion to withdraw-request for leave to amend information dated July 18, 2023, Kingman withdrew the charges of contempt, misconduct in public office, and perjury pertaining to first-class travel, among others, saying the recent ruling of judge pro tem Arthur Barcinas to grant the defense’ motion to quash the subpoena for Torres’ bank records makes

“This ruling made it clear what the court’s interpretation of pro hac vice means as applied to this case. If the counts of misconduct related to travel—but not even the charged count of theft—is the entire scope of the pro hac vice admission, the court is unlikely to find that including the contempt charge or the 37 other counts will fall therein,” Kingman said.

Further, “the court’s ruling held that the lack of separate probable cause determination was the most important protection. The CNMI lacks the standard mechanism, the grand jury, which in most jurisdictions is the independent probable cause assessor for both investigatory subpoenas and felony indictments.”

In his ruling last July 17, Barcinas stated that he granted the motion to quash the subpoena because the bank records are not relevant to the crimes charged against Torres.

The case against Torres charges him with misconduct in public office and Kingman had said that the subpoena intends to prove that Torres was a public official who completed an illegal act in office. The alleged illegal act that Torres did was violating the restrictions on government-paid travel outside of the CNMI.

“Since felony charges can be brought based on the probable cause assessment of the prosecuting authority through the information system, the special prosecutor made the application under the same theory. Now that theory has been rejected by the court in its ruling to quash the subpoena, the same apparent deficiencies that the court found there would likely apply to the amended information,” Kingman said.

In light of the court’s ruling, Kingman withdrew his request to amend the information but said he will proceed to prosecute the other charges.

In his request to amend the information last May 5, the proposed amendment included 37 charges that had not been previously brought which include: additional first-class travel, use of public funds for political or campaign activity, perjuring himself in a declaration for government expenditure, illegal reimbursement, theft by deception, theft of utility services, purposeful release of a captive deer, authorizing a special permit for out-of-season collection of coconut crab, and misuse of government transport.

Torres’ case was initially filed on April 8, 2022, charging him with 12 counts of misconduct in public office, one count of theft, and one count of contempt. Torres has denied the charges.