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Attorneys for both sides had just announced their names for the record when the man said: “Jahbriel El, on behalf of self.”
He then interrupted Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi as she began to speak.
“I’m here to withdraw my plea, your Honor,” El said.
Jahbriel El (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
The judge then tried to explain that she needed a formal explanation of his grounds in order to consider a plea withdrawl when El cut in again.
“Hold on, your Honor,” he said. “I was not informed of no letter I was required to submit. You’re pushing me out of court when I want to speak.”
In a long, rambling speech, El said he’d researched his rights from behind bars and insisted he was denied due process.
Finally, the judge had enough.
“He can’t stay in the courtroom and interfere with sentencing,” she said. “He is loud, unruly. He talks over everybody.
“He refuses to follow the rules of decorum, and to allow the sentence to go forward,” the judge added. “We gave him sufficient time, and he has had more than enough counsel. He has done this every time he was due for sentence.”
The only time that El cooperated, DeAvila-Silebi said, was “the day he decided to plead guilty” last fall.
He complied with sheriff’s officers who took him back to the county jail today.
The judge then denied the requested plea withdrawal and sentenced El to 10-year concurrent sentences for the aggravated sexual assaults of the youngsters, ages 3 and 7.
He received 1,200 days of jail credit and will have to register as a Megan’s Law offender for life when he is released from prison after serving a mandatory minimum of 85% of his sentence.
Parole will last four years, during which the judge said he could be returned to prison for any type of violation.
El originally was charged with assaulting three children — a 3-year-old and 7-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy — the same November 2010 day. But the older girl didn’t want to testify, authorities said.
Authorities said El told them that he was sexually assaulted as a child and committed the crimes to get even with the mother of one of the victims.
He was on the verge of going to trial two or three times before taking a plea last year.
“We entered the plea agreement to provide finality to the victims,” Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Marybel Mercado Ramirez said. “We prepped these small children on three separate occasions, and each time we brought them in it was more and more traumatizing.
“They cried, they hid under the witness box. They were very young at the time of the abuse.”
El, who is on his second lawyer in the case, tried to withdraw the plea at his November sentencing and was told that he had to submit a formal motion before today’s sentencing.
Public Defender Ian Silvera said he couldn’t support his client’s request “because there were no grounds.”
Silvera said he also told El that he would have to file a brief but that he never did.
Defense attorney Ian Silvera, Jahbriel El
(STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
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