Roundtable held on Crime Victim's Rights Law

by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - Representatives from the Attorney General's Office and the Judiciary of Guam took part in a roundtable discussion this week with Senator Frank Aguon, Jr's committee over the Crime Victim's Rights Law. Aguon says while some assurances were provided by the AG's Office, other gaps were identified as well.

"They did acknowledge though that there may have been a few gaps in between where they were not able to communicate directly between the victims and their families in a reasonable timeframe, and they're going to try and work on fixing that," he said.

Aguon hopes the roundtable helps others understand what the process and the rights of victims and their families in being informed of any plea agreements or pending issues regarding alleged perpetrators.

It was recently when Vice Speaker B.J. Cruz asked Aguon to hold the roundtable over concern on what he called the "failure" in the process by which victims are notified of plea agreements offered to their assailants. Aguon says the AG's Office should be forwarding to his committee in the next 60 days a manual of standard operating procedures for the prosecutors and attorneys to better follow.