\u201cA court has the discretion to reject a plea agreement if it feels it is unjust.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thus stressed Superior Court associate judge David A. Wiseman in rejecting a plea agreement entered by the Attor-ney General\u2019s Office and recidivist Diego Sa-las Mundo.<\/p>\n
Wiseman said because plea agreements may not invade the traditionally judicial function of what penalty to impose, judges are given the power to reject plea bargains, which invade this authority.<\/p>\n
Mundo is facing three criminal cases. He and his lawyer signed a plea agreement with the government, represented by Chief Prosecutor Jeffery Warfield Sr. <\/p>\n
On Nov. 28, 2006 the defendant entered a guilty plea. Wiseman accepted the guilty plea, but rejected the terms and conditions of the agreement. Mundo withdrew his guilty plea.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case the court does not feel the plea agreement is just in view of the recidivist character of the defendant,\u201d Wiseman said.<\/p>\n
The judge cited that Mundo has had 21 criminal cases filed in the CNMI over the years. He said there were 12 separate convictions and numerous instances of non-compliance with the terms and conditions of probation.<\/p>\n
Wiseman pointed out that in his sentencing order in a 2001 criminal case, he noted that Mundo\u2019s release from jail only results in him committing more crimes and continuously placing members of society in danger.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince [then], he [Mundo) has had no less than three additional criminal cases and a revocation of his probation filed against him,\u201d Wiseman said.<\/p>\n
The judge set a status conference for Mundo\u2019s pending three cases.<\/p>\n
Early in July 2006, Wiseman found probable cause to warrant the filing of charges against Mundo for forging documents to sell a vehicle belonging to his common-law wife. Mundo was released on bail.<\/p>\n
In July 2004, the CNMI Supreme Court affirmed the criminal convictions of Mundo, who harassed tourists, threatened another man and resisted police arrest at a Tinian restaurant.<\/p>\n
In December 2004, Mundo was arrested anew for domestic violence.<\/p>\n
In August 2006, Mundo was arrested for allegedly harassing people and hitting a man with a beer can outside Hong Kong Store in Garapan.<\/p>\n
On July 24, 2006, Mundo was arrested for allegedly harassing employees and customers of a barbecue stand. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cA court has the discretion to reject a plea agreement if it feels it is unjust.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}