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Online gambling cases sent back by county judge
October 31, 2008 (InfoPowa News) — There may be some red faces among prosecutors and enforcement officers in Maricopa County in the state of Arizona this week after a local Superior Court judge sent gambling-ring charges back to the grand jury because a county prosecutor failed to inform the jury of important legal facts in getting the indictments.
The latest scolding by a judge follows a similar action a week ago when Judge Roland Steinle also threw out all the misdemeanor counts in the case — mostly charges of benefiting from gambling — because the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office had failed to get indictments before the one-year statute of limitations ran out on those crimes.
The Arizona Republic newspaper reports that more than 30 defendants faced 130 felony and 80 misdemeanor counts for placing and collecting on bets conducted through Costa Rican online gambling websites.
Steinle had already remanded charges against two defendants in September because the prosecutor failed to mention that the Costa Rican websites were possibly protected by international treaty and because of the prosecutor’s failure to answer questions about the legality of actions that took place in Costa Rica.
On Thursday, Steinle threw out charges against nine other defendants, leaving twenty defendants charged with multiple felonies in the case.
