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Death penalty
By Debra Barayuga
defendant asks to
withdraw plea
Star-BulletinA man charged in what could have been Hawaii's first death penalty case in decades wants to go to trial after all.
U.S. District Judge Alan C. Kay was expected to hear arguments today on whether Richard Lee Tuck Chong can withdraw his guilty plea and stand trial. He was to be sentenced Monday.
Chong, 49, was indicted in the shooting death of William Noa Jr., 33, at Makaha Beach Park in 1997 over a $100 drug debt.
Under a plea agreement reached less than a week before he was to go to trial in January, Chong pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for carrying and using a firearm to kill Noa.
In exchange, federal prosecutors agreed to drop their death penalty prosecution. Chong agreed to a life term without possibility of parole.
But in a July 7 letter addressed to Judge Alan C. Kay, Chong said he is not guilty of the charges against him and wants to go to trial "to prove my innocence."
Chong said medication he had been taking to help him focus had "severely diminished my ability to rationally consider what I was doing." After he requested and was given a milder dosage, he realized he shouldn't have pleaded guilty.
Court-appointed attorney Marcia Morrissey of Santa Monica, Calif., who has experience in death penalty cases, said Chong, not his attorneys had filed the motion. "It's a difficult situation and the judge will hear it and make his decision tomorrow."
Federal prosecutors oppose Chong's request. "Chong's claims of being unable to rationally consider what he was doing are simply not credible," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson, in court papers.
Chong's real motive is "at best, a change of heart," a "deliberate, planned attempt by a savvy veteran of the criminal justice system to hoax the government into withdrawing its demand for the death penalty." Chong has the burden of showing a "fair and just reason" for withdrawal and he has failed, Sorenson argued.
At the time of his guilty plea, Chong told the court that the medication he was taking did not impair his ability to think clearly, and that it helped him understand the proceedings.
He was attentive throughout the hearing and responded appropriately to questions. He listened intently to the court's lengthy explanation as to the charge he was pleading to and the elements of the offense. After hearing the facts the government would have produced at trial, Chong agreed to the facts and to the plea agreement.
At no time did he ask the court to repeat or explain anything, Sorenson said. "Chong never appeared anything less than completely confident and certain in his decision to plead guilty."
In dropping the death penalty prosecution, the government acknowledged that while Chong is a future danger, he could be confined safely. The death penalty lost "considerable viability" as a sentencing option because it would be difficult to reinstate it by arguing that he cannot be safely housed, Sorenson said.
Chong had a history of violence that included sexually assaulting and robbing a 48-year-old woman, holding an ice pick to a fellow inmate's throat while sodomizing him, and invading a Manoa home and robbing two women residents.
