VICKILYN Manglona Teregeyo, through her court-appointed attorney Richard Miller, has requested the federal court for a sentence modification and compassionate release because she is due to give birth in a matter of weeks.
Miller said his client is eight months pregnant.
Last month, Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona of the District Court for the NMI revoked the supervised release of Teregeyo after she admitted that she used methamphetamine.
Judge Manglona sentenced Teregeyo to serve a term of three months imprisonment, followed by three months of home confinement/detention with electronic location monitoring as a special condition of a 27-month supervised release.
In a 7-page motion filed on Tuesday, Miller said his client is currently serving her sentence imposed on March 25, 2022 in the CNMI Department of Corrections.
She is not in a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility, he added.
CNMI Corrections, he said, “has no nursery or mother-infant program, such as the one the Bureau provides its expecting inmates. Without compassionate release, Teregeyo will be separated from her newborn almost immediately after she gives birth, and mother and newborn will have no contact during the first several weeks of the newborn’s life.”
The lawyer added, “These circumstances constitute extraordinary and compelling reasons that warrant a modification of Teregeyo’s imposed term of imprisonment.”
He said his client is requesting to be released no later than May 1, 2022 to provide for the possibility that she may go into labor early; and the “enlargement of her period of home confinement to include the remaining days to serve from the term of imprisonment.”
In the alternative, she requests that she be permitted to serve her three months’ home confinement starting May 1 and to report back to Corrections on August 1 to serve the remainder of her prison sentence, the lawyer said.
If the court releases Teregeyo now, Miller said she would immediately begin serving the term of home confinement that the court has already ordered.
“She would live with her companion and the father of the expected child, Raymond Roberto, under electronic home monitoring by the Office of Adult Probation. The Probation Office has already inspected Mr. Roberto’s home and determined that it is suitable,” he added.
Teregeyo was convicted on Guam for the offense of drug user in possession of firearm and ammunition and was allowed by the federal court system to serve her probation in the CNMI.
She was sentenced by Guam District Court Chief Judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood on May 24, 2019 to time served, 12 months and 18 days, with a three-year term of supervised release.
Teregeyo’s supervised release was previously set to expire on May 23, 2022.
Vickilyn Manglona Teregeyo
