Jail time maintained in abuse case

KEALAKEKUA — A college student who pleaded guilty to family abuse will have to serve out the remainder of his jail sentence, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Anthony Issei Makahanaloa, 22, Kailua-Kona, pleaded guilty to two counts of family abuse and illegal place to keep a pistol earlier this year. Charges of first-degree sexual assault, first-degree terroristic threatening, second-degree assault and kidnapping in connection with the Nov. 5, 2015, incident were dismissed per the plea.

He was given a four-year deferred acceptance of his guilty plea to the handgun charge, meaning that if he did not violate the terms of the deferral, the conviction would be expunged from his record. State law prohibits deferrals for family abuse cases.

Makahanaloa was also sentenced to 30 days in jail, 60 days of electronic monitoring, $415 in fines and was ordered to write a letter of apology to the victim.

Since the February sentencing, Makahanaloa has complied with the orders, as well as completed mandated domestic violence intervention and a medical evaluation, his probation officer reported during a hearing Tuesday.

Makahanaloa’s public defender, Ann Datta, made a motion to convert his remaining 27 days in jail to electronic monitoring because he has become the caregiver of two children, she said, and returned to college. He had been attending college until he was arrested, which caused him to miss midterms.

Circuit Court Judge Ronald Ibarra repeatedly pressed Makahanaloa to realize his actions resulted to his incarceration. After some back and forth, Ibarra seemed satisfied.

“So because of your action, you got kicked out of college,” he said.

“No, it was my fault,” Makahanaloa said.

Ibarra eventually ruled Makahanaloa had to serve the remainder of his jail time at the discretion of the probation officer. That would include serving time outside of courses, such as fall or winter break, he said.

The case against Makahanaloa has been complicated since the get-go as the victim recanted her statement on the day of the preliminary hearing. It left deputy prosecuting attorney Sheri Lawson in the position of having a victim deny her earlier statements one by one, including being threatened with a handgun.

This caused some blow-back to the office with callers suggesting the charges should be dropped. But Lawson stood firm, and received insults against her outside the courthouse after the preliminary hearing.

“I believe it occurred,” she told West Hawaii Today on Tuesday about the victim’s original complaint.

She viewed the victim’s decision as a result of a storm of emotions, along with external pressure.

Speaking generally, she said, victims often recant “because they love the people they’re with and they don’t want bad things to happen to them, even though the bad things happened to (the victim.)”

And it can be hard to testify against a person they rode with to court, Lawson said.

“We just don’t not try cases because someone says they don’t want to go forward. We examine it to see if it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said.

According to the victim’s original testimony, Makahanaloa had come into her home and became angry that she was talking with another man online. He yelled at her as she held a 10-month-old child before ordering her into the car, where he had a pistol in a backpack.

Admittedly, having a victim recant complicates the case as it brings their credibility into question, Lawson said. Lawson estimates as many as 75 percent of victims file waivers of prosecution in family abuse, she said. She reviews them, but also has to look at the facts of the case.

“Sometimes there are liars,” she said, but normally the waiver comes from an interplay of emotions.

So, the prosecutors work to bring the case forward in an attempt to improve the community, she said.

And federal data shows there is great deal of this sort of violence in the state.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a randomized phone survey of residents, finding out, among other things, if they had ever been physically assaulted by an intimate partner. It cover spouses, dating relationships and ongoing sexual partners, but does not go into the family abuse elements included in Hawaii law.

Nationwide, the most impacted are multi-racial women, with more than half reporting physical abuse at some point in their lives. Multi-racial men were the next most effected, with 39.3 percent reporting abuse.

“These forms of violence can lead to serious short- and long-term consequences including physical injury, poor mental health, and chronic physical health problems. For some persons, violence victimization results in hospitalization, disability, or death,” the CDC wrote.

Lawson’s goal is to mitigate those problems.

“At the end of the day, you don’t want to tear a family apart,” she said, although sometimes that has to happen.

A better outcome is where the offender learns how to manage the underlying issue and can return to normal life, she said. At the same time, prosecutors aren’t social workers.

“We’re here to figure out what justice is and how to make our community better,” she said.

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The CDC used 2011 data to generate information on the amount of intimate partner violation. The information was collected by randomly selected phone calls. The estimate of effected people was prepared by comparing the numbers to U.S. Census data.