Well, I was correct that federal prosecutors wrapped up two new plea deals. Dae Han Moon and Jarrin Young, who were facing trial in January along with former Honolulu business owner Michael J. Miske Jr., have now been officially dropped from the trial and are awaiting sentencing.

I wrote about Moon’s role in the case in a Civil Beat story published on Wednesday, and mentioned the second on my blog when I learned of it.

Their written plea agreements were filed in court this week during a pair of hearings. I admit that these hearings were scheduled and done so quickly that I missed notices until after the hearings were completed.

But these latest agreements were different from the seven previous plea agreements of other defendants who have already pleaded guilty. Neither one contains a provision requiring the defendant to cooperate with prosecutors, divulge everything they know, and testify against their former associates. These have been standard provisions of previous deals.

I should have seen this coming, because Moon and Young were not included on the list of just over 700 potential witnesses expected in the trial.

This appears to mean prosecutors do not believe their testimony is needed to make their cases at trial.

In Moon’s plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to seek a sentence of more than 15 years, and took no position on whether that should be served concurrently with any other sentences Moon is serving on the state crimes he was previously convicted of, or consecutively, meaning that the federal sentence would not begin until he completes the state prison terms. Prosecutors said they would leave that decision to the discretion of the court at sentencing.

Young’s guilty plea to a drug trafficking offense entails a maximum 20-year sentence, according to the plea agreement, although it apparently avoided a provision that had a 10-year maximum.