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Atofau's counsel says client is entitled to discovery
Wednesday,
June 24, 2009
The attorney for drug defendant Punaloa David Atofau says her client is entitled to full discovery on the misconduct in the removal of evidence from the Department of Public Safety evidence room.
In her response to the High court’s order for further clarification from the government on why the Atofau case should be dismissed, attorney Sharon Rancourt states that there should be full discovery on the anonymous source who told Assistant Attorney General Nicole Castro that the drugs from the Atofau case had been replaced with sugar powder, on why Detective Paulo Leuma had informed counsel Castro that all of the evidence in the Atofau case was missing then somehow marijuana turns up and the removal of a scale from the Atofau case by then Detective Norman Heather.
The scale is mentioned in the affidavit for Officer Jerry Sauni’s case, one of the cops charged in connection with the removal of evidence from DPS. According to the affidavit, Sauni says he and Detective Heather had used a black digital scale from Atofau’s case for the Narcotics Unit. Sauni said he failed to return the scale which is now missing.
Rancourt also points out that the defense had never received any reports of marijuana testing from the Drug Enforcement Agency. However on Monday, June 22, Assistant AG Lisa Teesch Maguire provided reports from the DEA for the alleged marijuana.
She states that when the government moved to dismiss the Atofau case, the government was attempting to do the right thing taking into consideration due process concerns and the credibility of its own employees. The court in refusing to dismiss this matter outright, places pressure on the government to sanitize or sterilize this evidence. In other words, forcing this case to trial forces the government to attempt to choose and present which pieces of evidence are clean and ignore which pieces are corrupted.
The government last week decided to proceed with the prosecution of the Atofau case and made a motion to withdraw. The court has yet to rule on the motion.
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