A Bangladeshi national who was found deportable from the CNMI based on his 2011 conviction of marriage fraud was actually convicted of a crime that no longer existed at that time, according to Bashar\u2019s new counsel, Janet H. King.<\/p>\n
King said that Mohammad A. Bashar\u2019s conviction is invalid for lack of jurisdiction and violates his constitutional right to due process and effective assistance of counsel.<\/p>\n
Bashar, through King, filed last week a motion asking the Superior Court to set aside his plea and vacate his conviction and sentence.<\/p>\n
King said she only recently discovered the error and has brought the motion at the earliest opportunity.<\/p>\n
Bashar\u2019s motion will be heard before Presiding Judge Robert C. Naraja on Dec. 15 at 1:30pm.<\/p>\n
King said that Bashar\u2019s plea, conviction, and sentence should be set aside as invalid because they are based on a statute that had already been repealed.<\/p>\n
Bashar pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) to marriage fraud\u2014under 3 CMC Section 4366\u2014in February 2011. The court accepted his plea and a judgment of conviction was entered shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n
King said 3 CMC Section 4366 was repealed in February 2010\u2014a year before the plea.<\/p>\n
King said Bashar\u2019s prior attorney failed to advise Bashar that the statute had been repealed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese errors resulted in prejudice to Bashar, who was convicted and sentenced under the repealed statute and is being subjected to immigration removal proceedings,\u201d the lawyer said.<\/p>\n
King said Bashar\u2019s other retained lawyer in his removal case also never advised him about the repealed statute.<\/p>\n
Last July, King brought Bashar\u2019s case to the U.S. Supreme Court as the defendant insisted that he was innocent of the charges and that he was provided ineffective assistance of counsel.<\/p>\n
King said her purpose is to correct a manifest injustice to Bashar resulting from his plea and conviction for marriage fraud, after the statute criminalizing marriage fraud had been repealed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Bangladeshi national who was found deportable from the CNMI based on his 2011 conviction…<\/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":[14490,1992,88,139],"class_list":["post-241543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-king-man","tag-last-july","tag-superior-court","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241543","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=241543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}