Superior Court Associate Judge Kenneth Govendo has a pattern of changing his ruling on the bench without conducting a hearing, according to attorney Antonio M. Atalig.<\/p>\n
Atalig said in the first order he issued on the bench Govendo ordered him and attorney Reynaldo O. Yana to spend 30 days in jail for civil contempt.<\/p>\n
\u201cLater on he (Govendo) changed it. We\u2019re beginning to realize that this judge loves to change his orders he issued on the bench,\u201d said Atalig after Friday\u2019s hearing when police re-arrested him and Yana.<\/p>\n
Atalig said Govendo has a pattern of changing his oral order through a written decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is known for issuing orders on the bench, and then issuing a different order in writing,\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n
On their re-arrest, Atalig said it is not their fault, but \u201cthe systems\u2019 mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he and Yana were expecting for their re-arrest so they were just waiting for the police at their respective houses last Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not the justice that I am thinking,\u201d Atalig stressed.<\/p>\n
Yana refused to comment.<\/p>\n
On Friday afternoon police re-arrested the two lawyers after they were \u201cwrongfully released\u201d by the Department of Corrections Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Police picked up Yana and Atalig after Govendo issued that day a bench warrant for their arrest.<\/p>\n
Govendo issued the warrant after learning that, after he remanded the two lawyers into custody Thursday morning, DOC immediately released them.<\/p>\n
Govendo imposed a $1.3 million bail each for the lawyers\u2019 release.<\/p>\n
After their arrest, Yana and Atalig were brought before associate judge David Wiseman for a bail hearing Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
At the hearing, Yana explained that by April 24 (Thursday) they were already in detention for 30 days.<\/p>\n
Wiseman read Govendo\u2019s order issued last Thursday that clearly stated the order set no fixed jail term and remanded them to DOC.<\/p>\n
Wiseman said the two were wrongfully released by DOC. He remanded the two to jail.<\/p>\n
On March 28, Govendo issued the contempt order and ordered Yana and Atalig to be imprisoned until they disgorged the $1.3 million that they received in the Angel Malite estate probate.<\/p>\n
During Thursday\u2019s review hearing, Govendo threw the two lawyers back to jail for their continued failure to return the money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Superior Court Associate Judge Kenneth Govendo has a pattern of changing his ruling on the bench without conducting a hearing, according to attorney Antonio M. Atalig.<\/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-122188","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\/122188","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=122188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}