Dec. 23—A state appellate court denied the appeal of a Laflin woman who wanted to withdraw her no-contest plea on a felony assault charge stemming from a stabbing in Harveys Lake in 2020.
Isabella Rosa Sobejano, 24, of Peachwood Drive, claimed she was pressured into signing a no-contest plea agreement to aggravated assault by her lawyer, Ruth K. Lenahan.
Pennsylvania State Police at Wilkes-Barre charged Sobejano after she stabbed Samuel Parente in the neck with a knife inside a boat house on June 15, 2020, according to court records.
Sobejano, at the time a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, had Parente do jumping jacks before she stabbed him in the neck, court records say.
Parente reportedly was ending the relationship with Sobejano who claimed she was pregnant with his child in order for the relationship to continue. The pregnancy was false, state police stated in court records.
After Sobejano pled no-contest to aggravated assault on July 7, 2022, Luzerne County Judge David W. Lupas sentenced her to one-year house arrest and 30 months probation.
However, Sobejano listed her permanent address in Laflin but was residing near UPenn where she attended school. The county where she was residing while enrolled at UPenn does not accept transfers of defendants sentenced to house arrest.
In her petition to Post Conviction Relief, filed by her appellate attorney, Zak T. Goldstein of Philadelphia, Sobejano requested to withdraw her no-contest plea as she claimed she was pressured into the agreement as her attorneys were unprepared.
Sobejano was initially represented by Attorney Mark Mack before she retained Lenahan.
When Sobejano’s case was called for trial in April 2022, she had re-retained the Mack Law Firm as she previously testified she believed Lenahan was unprepared. Lenahan was the attorney-of-record on the no-contest plea agreement.
Lupas denied to continue Sobejano’s trial in April 2022, which she believed forced her into the no-contest plea agreement. She further claimed her lawyers never fully explained the no-contest plea agreement and was unaware her house arrest sentence would not be accepted in the county where she resided while attending UPenn.
Sobejano appealed to the Pennsylvania Superior Court.
A three-member panel of the Superior Court in a six-page opinion issued Friday denied Sobejano’s appeal, ruling her petition for Post Conviction Relief was untimely filed. The PCRA petition was filed one week and six days too late, the Superior Court ruled.