SUPERIOR Court Associate Judge Wesley Bogdan found Sergio M. Rangamar guilty of stalking and disturbing the peace after a bench trial on Monday.
Judge Bogdan said he was satisfied that the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Rangamar’s course of conduct, a series of two or more acts, interfered with the victim, to the point of causing her to fear for her safety and suffer emotional distress.
The victim in this case is the mother of Rangamar’s children.
Bogdan said the defendant was aware that the victim would have a heightened awareness of the impact of his actions as evidenced by the multiple TRO’s she has taken out against him in the past.
Based on testimonies of five witnesses at trial, Judge Bogdan counted a series of six incidents that form the course of conduct: (1) making several phone calls to her work; (2) obtaining victim’s phone number at her place of work while asking about her schedule; (3) appearing at her work on Mother’s Day; (4) appearing in the victim’s work parking lot which caused her to have someone else move her car; (5) going to the victim’s mother’s house to see her late at night; (6) appearing to drive away from the victim’s home.
“While some of these events were more convincingly testified to at trial than others,” said the judge, “it is this court’s finding that the defendant purposefully engaged in a course of conduct directed at the mother of his children and former partner and knew or should have known that his course of conduct would cause her to fear for her safety or to suffer emotional distress.”
Bogdan said he does not believe the defense’s suggestion that the defendant was merely taking these actions to try to see his children.
“The far more reasonable course of action under the circumstances present here would have been to contact his children via social media — as he had been doing while off-island — to set a time to visit with them or to go to court to get an Order of Visitation as opposed to repeatedly contacting the victim’s work, appearing at midnight at her place of work, driving to her residence unannounced or stopping in her family home at 9 p.m.”
The judge ordered the Office of Adult Probation to submit a pre-sentence investigation no later than May 5, 2022, and set the sentencing hearing for May 26, 2022 at 10 a.m. in courtroom 223A.
Before the sentencing hearing, the judge said, counsels shall submit briefs concerning their ideas of what is meant in 6 CMC § 1472(f), which states that “[s]talking in the second degree is a felony punishable by imprisonment of up to one year, by a fine of up to $1,000, or both,” which appears to be in conflict with 6 CMC § 102, which states that felony “means any offense or conduct proscribed by Commonwealth law which is punishable by more than one year confinement in jail or prison.”
As for the defendant, Judge Bogdan said he shall remain under all pre-trial release conditions.
Defendant was reminded that he is not to have any contact, direct or indirect, with the victim and that violating this condition will be grounds for his detainment until sentenced.
Likewise, the third-party custodian is reminded of his duty to monitor and contact the Department of Public Safety should Rangamar break any of the terms of his pre-trial release, and ensure that all other conditions of his release are observed, Judge Bogdan said.
