Court to decide on Stanley’s case today

The CNMI Superior Court is expected to render its decision today on the motion to dismiss criminal charges against former congressman Stanley Torres.

Superior Court judge Juan T. Lizama has given the Attorney General’s Office up to today to justify its position against the motion.

Earlier, the lawyers for Torres and his co-defendants, former legislative staff Dorothy Sablan and Frank S. Ada, asked the court to quash the AGO’s charging documents because they do not carry the name of Attorney General Pam Brown as supposedly required by rules.

In a May 17 supplemental opposition to the motion, Deputy Attorney General Clyde Lemons and chief prosecutor David Hutton maintained that the practice of filing of information by and through the Assistant Attorney General “is a longstanding practice dating back through several AG terms.”

They cited that the Attorney General’s Office policies and procedure manual promulgated in 2002 by then Attorney General Robert Torres, who now sits as Torres’ legal counsel, provides that “crimes and infractions of the CNMI law are to be orderly and expeditiously prosecuted at the discretion of the deputy of the Criminal Division.

Likewise, the prosecution said that Lemons’ examination of the policies and procedure manual in 1998 “is devoid of any requirement of reference to the Attorney General to be included in the filing of Information.

Further, the prosecution said that current practice conforms to all the requirements of Rule 7 of the Commonwealth’s criminal procedure.

“Nowhere to be found either in case law, statute, or any rule of procedure is the requirement that information be filed specifically in the name of the Attorney General,” they said.

Meantime, in a declaration of support for the dismissal dated May 17, 2004, former Attorney General Torres said that, during his tenure from Jan. 25, 2002, until Aug. 23, 2002, Lemons was tasked to formulate a policy and procedure manual for the operations of the Criminal Division “because AGO lacked any organized policies and procedures.”

He said the manual was approved during his term, and that he has always understood that “at all times, Mr. Lemons was comporting with the constitutional requirement that all informations filed be brought with my name and title as Attorney General.”

“Apparently, this understanding of the constitutional requirement was not followed in the criminal division,” he said. “Had I actually known that prosecutors in the AGO criminal division failed to comport with the constitutional requirement of placing my name and title in each information, Mr. Lemons would surely been reprimanded and commanded,” said Torres.

Lawyer Perry Inos also submitted samples of prior informations that conformed with the supposed constitutional requirement that criminal prosecutions be filed in the name of the Attorney General.

Former Rep. Torres is being charged in court for allegedly hiring a ghost employee, Dorothy Sablan, when he was still in office.

The criminal information alleged that Sablan received at least five checks totaling $5,384.67 in government payroll in 2003, when she was actually off-island.

Co-accused employee Frank Ada allegedly prepared fraudulent time and attendance sheets indicating that Sablan rendered work when she was off-island.