A 33-year-old Hilo woman, allegedly pregnant, who failed to complete a court-ordered anger management program, was subdued Tuesday by sheriff’s deputies after she became agitated and violent during a court hearing.
Third Circuit Judge Glenn Hara ordered Ashley Mercado-Silva removed from the courtroom because of her outburst. The tirade occurred during a hearing about a motion filed by prosecutors to revoke her probation on a 2013 conviction for felony theft, credit card theft and credit card fraud.
Mercado-Silva was arrested Monday on a no-bail warrant for allegedly violating her probation, including a nonclinical discharge from an anger management course she was ordered to complete as a condition of her probation.
Stanton Oshiro, Mercado-Silva’s court-appointed attorney, requested further proceedings on the motion and asked that his client be granted supervised release. He added it was her first alleged probation violation.
“Mr. Oshiro, it sounds to me as though you believe defendants should be allowed to blow off probation once,” the judge said.
Oshiro replied that wasn’t what he intended to convey with his request.
Deputy Prosecutor Rick Damerville asked Hara to set Mercado-Silva’s bail at $10,000 with conditions of no drugs or alcohol, and substance-abuse testing.
Oshiro requested the judge set his client’s bail at $5,000, but Hara ordered the higher bail Damerville requested.
At that point, Mercado-Silva, apparently upset that her lawyer abandoned his request for her release without bail, erupted.
“Five thousand dollars bail? Seriously, Stanton?” she snapped, and started swearing loudly.
Oshiro attempted to calm Mercado-Silva down, but she slammed the defense table viciously with one hand and unleashed another string of expletives.
The judge ordered sheriff’s deputies to remove Mercado-Silva from the courtroom and take her to a detention cell.
Mercado-Silva resisted violently and continued to scream profanities. Two deputies managed to wrestle her to the floor, pick her up by the shoulders and feet and carry her through a side door into the cell, where she could still be heard yelling and cursing.
Several members of Mercado-Silva’s family were present at the hearing. During the commotion, the woman’s mother stood and bellowed, “Hey, my daughter is … pregnant.”
She then stormed out of the courtroom.
Hara called for a brief recess. When the judge returned, he scheduled a hearing for Mercado-Silva at 1 p.m. Friday before 3rd Circuit Judge Greg Nakamura.
“The court is going to note, for the record, that Ms. Mercado-Silva was angry, combative and had to be physically restrained by the sheriffs and removed from the courtroom,” Hara said.
Afterward, Damerville said courtroom tantrums as explosive as the one he’d just witnessed are relatively rare.
“We see some pretty strange things, but an outburst that violent doesn’t happen too often,” he said.
Mercado-Silva remained in custody Wednesday at Hawaii Community Correctional Center.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.