HONOLULU — A federal judge on Thursday declared a mistrial in a case against a man accused of stealing the Honolulu police chief’s mailbox.
U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi said she had no choice but to declare a mistrial after Chief Louis Kealoha unexpectedly testified about the defendant’s criminal history.
Kealoha was the second witness on the first day of trial against Gerard Puana, who is the uncle of Kealoha’s wife.
Puana’s attorney called for a mistrial when Kealoha testified that Puana previously was charged with breaking into a neighbor’s home.
Public Defender Alexander Silvert said Kealoha should have known better than to bring that up and damage his client’s credibility. Kobayashi agreed.
Silvert said the Kealohas framed Puana to discredit him in a lawsuit he and his 95-year-old mother filed claiming Katherine Kealoha stole money from them.
Katherine Kealoha is on personal leave as head of the career criminal unit of the Honolulu prosecutor’s office.
The case brought allegations of undue influence after a highly specialized police squad made an arrest. Louis Kealoha denied giving the case any preferential treatment.
It also exposed a messy family financial dispute.
According to a criminal complaint, Puana tore the mailbox from its support post in June 2013, stuck it into a car and drove away. The mailbox was in front of Louis and Katherine Kealoha’s former home in an upscale east Honolulu neighborhood.
Prosecutors said Puana stole it in an effort to access account records that were sent to the residence. The records were connected to a lawsuit that Puana and his mother, Florence Puana, filed against Katherine Kealoha a few months earlier alleging she took money they entrusted to her.
According to the lawsuit, Katherine Kealoha helped her grandmother get a reverse mortgage on her home to pay for a condo for Gerard Puana from an account they shared.
There were disbursements of more than $513,000, but the apartment cost only about $376,000. Katherine Kealoha has failed to account for the difference, the lawsuit says.
Records in the lawsuit show expenditures for things like more than $2,000 for Elton John tickets, $4,000 for a Mercedes Benz lease payment and nearly $24,000 for her husband’s police chief induction breakfast at the Sheraton Waikiki.
Katherine Kealoha denies the allegations, saying the lawsuit is a “fantasy story” aimed at obtaining money and embarrassing her.
Funds she took from the joint account “were either my own funds, or reimbursement for funds that I loaned my grandmother in connection with her attempt to purchase the … apartment for my uncle Gerard,” she said in court filings.