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Warfield: Miura is being forced out
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Posted on Sep 25 2008
Kazuyoshi Miura is being forced out of collaborating with his lawyers on strategy, tactics and overall decision making, according to assistant attorney general Jeffery L. Warfield Sr. yesterday.
Warfield said the 61-year-old Miura is being stripped of the authority exercised by all clients in dealing with their attorneys—the authority to make the final decision in a face-to-face relationship with his lawyer.
“Maintaining Miura in the CNMI is a great disservice to him, whether he realizes it or not,” said the prosecutor in response to another motion to stay Miura’s extradition order.
“The balance of hardship tips solely to the Commonwealth, which has been forced to feed, house and guard this California prisoner,” Warfield said.
On Wednesday, one of Miura’s lawyers, Bruce Berline, filed an emergency motion asking the CNMI Supreme Court to stay Miura’s extradition or his removal from Saipan to California while he pursues further proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the NMI.
Berline said if the CNMI High Court does not grant a stay of extradition, their client could be extradited at any time and thus forever lose his right to appeal those issues.
But in the CNMI government’s opposition to the emergency motion, Warfield said the motion should be summarily denied as Miura cannot show any probability of success on the merits.
Warfield said Miura’s only hope of any kind of success in meeting the charges against him are in the hearings being held in California.
Miura’s extradition is to his benefit and causes no injury, Warfield said.
“In reality the cognizable hardship to petitioner is that his being maintained in the CNMI is depriving him of the opportunity to meaningfully interact with his real attorney, the one presenting his affirmative defense without being afforded the input and thinking of his client,” he said.
