HONOLULU — A man convicted in a deadly shooting outside a Honolulu shopping center on Christmas Day 2016 claims he should not have stood trial for murder.
The lawyer for 22-year-old Dae Han Moon requested a judge to nullify the verdicts and to dismiss the charges because only one doctor declared 20-year-old Steve Feliciano brain dead before allowing his organs to be donated, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Monday.
Under state law, a person on artificial life support is determined dead when an attending physician and a consulting physician both sign statements declaring the death.
A jury found Moon guilty last month of second-degree murder and firearms charges in the shooting inside the parking garage of Ala Moana Center.
Feliciano, an organ donor, was shot in the head. He was kept on life support for two more days after a neurologist declared him brain dead three days following the shooting, deputy prosecutor Scott Bell said in a court filing in response to the defense’s motions. Doctors removed organs and tissue from Feliciano’s body on Dec. 30, 2016.
Moon’s lawyer Victor Bakke said that despite his requests, prosecutors never provided any signed physician statements indicating how many doctors were involved in declaring Feliciano brain dead until Bell’s filing.
The grand jury should not have indicted Moon on a murder charge because prosecutors didn’t provide the brain dead declaration, Bakke said. Moon was indicted on Dec. 29, 2016.
The medical examiner determined that Feliciano’s cause of death was the gunshot wound to the head, Bell said. He did not die as a result of the removal of organs or life support, he said.
Moon’s challenge to the indictment is moot because it should have been argued before the trial, Bell said.
A court hearing on the matter is scheduled for Nov. 13.