Denmar Malabanan, a repeat offender accused of punching and biting his girlfriend, pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace on Friday.<\/p>\n
Superior Court Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho accepted Malabanan\u2019s guilty plea and set the sentencing for Oct. 29 at 9am.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old Malabanan waived the need for a presentence investigation report.<\/p>\n
After the hearing, Malabanan was remanded into the custody of the Department of Corrections.<\/p>\n
As the court marshal was preparing to take Malabanan back to prison, his girlfriend, who was in the courtroom, told him she loves him. Malabanan replied that he loves her too.<\/p>\n
According to court documents, Malabanan punched and slapped his girlfriend in the face on Sept. 13, 2015, on Saipan. She did not seek medical attention.<\/p>\n
Last Wednesday, Camacho found the government\u2019s proposed plea deal for Malabanan too lenient. It recommended a sentence of just 90 days in prison.<\/p>\n
In rejecting the proposed deal, Camacho said a 90-day prison sentence has no rehabilitative effect, considering Malabanan\u2019s past criminal cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaking into consideration defendant\u2019s past criminal cases, a 90-day jail sentence also fails to have any deterrence or retribution effect,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
The Office of the Attorney General originally charged the 27-year-old Malabanan with assault and battery and disturbing the peace for allegedly beating and kicking his girlfriend, causing bruises on her face, a bleeding nose, bite marks on the shoulder, and other injuries in the body.<\/p>\n
The beating arose because Malabanan allegedly did not want his girlfriend to move out of his home.<\/p>\n
The charges carry a maximum imprisonment of one year and six months.<\/p>\n
Under the proposed plea agreement, Malabanan was supposed to plead guilty to assault and battery.<\/p>\n
With Camacho\u2019s rejection of the plea agreement, assistant attorney general Emily Cohen filed on Friday an amended information charging the defendant only with a count of disturbing the peace.<\/p>\n
Malabanan and his counsel, assistant public defender Tillman Clark, and assistant attorney general Emily Cohen entered a proposed plea agreement.<\/p>\n
The bench trial was supposed to commence today, Monday.<\/p>\n
Last February, Malabanan was slapped with a 17-day prison term after pleading guilty to disturbing the peace. He was given credit for 17 days of time served.<\/p>\n
Malabanan was also charged with sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree in 2010.<\/p>\n
In 2007, the defendant pleaded guilty to robbery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Denmar Malabanan, a repeat offender accused of punching and biting his girlfriend, pleaded guilty to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2626,1663,2334,6120],"class_list":["post-213068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-attorney-general","tag-emily-cohen","tag-last-wednesday","tag-tillman-clark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213068","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}