Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — One of the several Samoans charged in a major drug case at the federal court in Honolulu has requested that his guilty plea be withdrawn, while federal prosecutors have strongly argued against granting the request.

There is no indication on federal court records as to when it will render a decision on the motion by defendant Jeremiah Ieremia, who is charged together with ten co-defendants with narcotics trafficking and related crimes filed in November 2016. His case was one of the six related drug cases in which a total of 37 defendants were charged.

Based on court documents in 2016, Samoa News reported at the time that more than a dozen Samoans are named as defendants in all these cases including Ieremia, who was charged with four counts of drug distribution, involving methamphetamine.

In May of last year, he pled guilty to three counts while the other count was dismissed, according to the plea agreement, which provides summary details of the three charges — pertaining to the three drug transactions he carried out.

“As to each of these three transactions, defendant Ieremia knew that the substance he was selling was methamphetamine,” according to the agreement which shows that in one transaction, the meth — half a pound — “was 98% pure.”

Early last month, June 2018, Ieremia — through his new attorney — filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that his former attorney, John Schum, “erroneously advised” him on the plea agreement and Schum had “grossly mischaracterized the law by advising... Ieremia that he would be sentenced to an agreed-upon amount of time.”

“Mr. Schum forced Mr. Ieremia to enter a guilty plea because Mr. Schum advised Mr. Ieremia that he had no defense,” the defendant alleges. Additionally, the defendant was advised that if he pled guilty, he would only get 11 years in prison because the federal government and the court agreed to be bound to sentence him to 11 years.

The defense also alleges that Schum didn’t explain to the defendant that the court was not bound by the plea agreement and it had an obligation to independently calculate the offense level.

According to the defense, it was September 2017 that Schum informed Ieremia of the “incorrect advice” given earlier and instead of the 11 years in jail, the defendant was now facing 24 to 30 years based on a report from the federal probation office.

Federal prosecutors last week asked the court to deny the request arguing that Schum didn’t “misinform” Ieremia about his potential sentence, and that it was later that Ieremia learned that he was “facing a much more significant amount of time” than the defendant originally believed.

According to prosecutors, records show that Schum “neither grossly mischaracterized” Ieremia’s “likely sentence nor otherwise provided the sort of deficient advice that might justify granting his motion to withdraw his guilty plea.”