{"id":284479,"date":"2018-09-14T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T20:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=284479"},"modified":"2018-09-14T06:00:01","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T20:00:01","slug":"mans-motion-to-withdraw-guilty-plea-is-denied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/mans-motion-to-withdraw-guilty-plea-is-denied\/","title":{"rendered":"Man\u2019s motion to withdraw guilty plea is denied"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_284480\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-284480\" style=\"width: 184px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Janet-H.-King-1-184x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"184\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-284480\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-284480\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">KING<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona has denied a notary public\u2019s request to withdraw his guilty plea to an indictment that charged him with lying in a U.S. passport application.<\/p>\n<p>At a motion hearing that adjourned Wednesday evening, Manglona said a review of all evidence shows that Liang Li pleaded guilty knowingly and voluntarily.<\/p>\n<p>According to the minutes of the hearing, the judge ruled that, based on the totality, Li failed to give a fair and just reason for withdrawing his plea.<\/p>\n<p>Li will be sentenced today, Friday, at 1:30pm.<\/p>\n<p>When asked if she plans to issue a written decision, Manglona said the record will suffice and that the ruling stands but she intends to support this with a written decision.<\/p>\n<p>At the hearing, defense counsel Janet H. King called Li to the witness stand.<\/p>\n<p>Assistant U.S. attorney James Benedetto, counsel for the U.S. government, called to the witness stand Li\u2019s previous counsels, Rene Holmes and Mark Scoggins.<\/p>\n<p>Last April 3, Li pleaded guilty to lying in a passport application but then filed a motion on Aug. 8 asking the court to allow him to withdraw his plea.<\/p>\n<p>He alleged that his former lawyer pressured him to take the plea offer by giving him less than a day to consider it, telling him he had no chance of winning if he went to trial, and threatening him with prison time if he did not accept the offer.<\/p>\n<p>In the U.S. government\u2019s opposition, Benedetto asserted that the allegations are patently false.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona has denied a notary&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":284480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12631,3791,22280,17533],"class_list":["post-284479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-james-benedetto","tag-last-april","tag-liang-li","tag-rene-holmes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284479","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=284479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}