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‘Savvy’ murder suspect
wins plea-withdrawal hearing

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By Debra Barayuga
Star-Bulletin

A hearing on a motion by Richard Lee Tuck Chong to withdraw his guilty plea for a drug-related murder and instead go to trial will not be heard until December at the earliest.

Yesterday, federal public defender Birney Bervar and attorney Richard Burr, an expert on the death penalty who has been assigned to represent Chong only on his motion to withdraw his plea, asked for time to retain an expert and conduct further investigation.

Chong averted a death penalty prosecution by pleading guilty in January, less than a week before he was to go to trial.

He had been indicted for using a firearm to kill William Noa at Makaha Beach Park in 1997 over a $100 drug debt.

Chong, in a July letter to the U.S. District Judge Alan C. Kay just days before he was to be sentenced, wrote that medication he had been taking impaired his ability to think clearly when he made his guilty plea.

U.S. Magistrate Barry Kurren set Dec. 4 as the deadline for prosecutors to respond to a report by the defense's expert. A hearing date on Chong's motion will be set later.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson earlier had objected to the lengthy delay, saying that every day that goes by prejudices the government's case.

Sorenson at a July hearing had opposed Chong's request to withdraw his plea. He called Chong's change of heart as 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."

In dropping its death penalty prosecution, the government had acknowledged that while Chong was a future danger, he could be confined safely.

The death penalty is no longer viable and would be difficult to reinstate if the government argues that Chong now cannot be safely housed, Sorenson had argued in court papers.