Rota mayor’s son says evidence obtained through illegal search

Wilbur Vic Masga Inos, the Rota mayor’s son who is facing robbery charges, has asked the federal court to exclude evidence that, according to him, were obtained during an illegal search.

Inos, through lawyer Robert T. Torres, said the entry onto his property by Rota police Sgt. Eusebio Manglona was without probable cause and without a warrant.

The lawyer said the court should suppress and exclude all evidence obtained as a result of this unlawful entry.

Police arrested Inos about an hour after a robbery at Rota Poker was reported to the Rota Department of Public Safety on Aug. 4, 2008.

Detective George A. Barcinas stated in his report that when interrogated, Inos surrendered the money and explained that he only did it because his son is in critical condition in Guam.

Inos was subsequently indicted in federal court with one count of Hobbs Act robbery and one count of use of a firearm in the commission of a violent crime.

Police said a masked man entered the poker arcade and pointed a rifle at the cashier and demanded money.

Police’s investigation led to the recovery of a black AR-15 rifle, its magazine, and three rounds of bullets from a roof of a barracks owned by the mayor.

Inos is facing separate robbery charges in the Superior Court over the same incident. He is the son of Rota Mayor Joseph Inos.

In the motion, Torres said the court should also suppress and exclude custodial interrogation and statements taken in violation of Inos’ Fifth Amendment rights, including advisal of his Miranda rights.

Torres said that because Sgt. Manglona entered private property to which Inos had a legitimate expectation of privacy, the government violated Inos’ Fifth Amendment rights.

Moreover, the lawyer said, Manglona’s gunpoint interrogation of Inos and 40-minute detention resulting in incriminating statements and additional evidence was neither voluntarily given nor intelligently made.

“The subsequent police station advisal of his Miranda rights was not sufficiently removed in time so as to remove the unlawful taint of constitutional violations,” Torres said.

In the U.S. government’s opposition to the motion, assistant U.S. attorney James J. Benedetto said the defendant has no standing to challenge the search of the barracks, or alternatively, consented to the search.

Benedetto said there is no indication that Inos lives in or frequent the barracks.

Benedetto also argued that without actual coercion by the police, Inos’ post-Miranda statement is admissible, and would have led to discovery of all the other evidence initially recovered at the scene.

The prosecutor said Inos’ post-Miranda interview at the Rota DPS station was not coerced in any way, and yet he voluntarily agreed to waive his rights and spoke with the officers.

“His voluntary waiver of those rights, after being fully informed of them, sufficiently purged the taint of any violation that might have occurred,” Benedetto said.