HONOLULU — Despite the U.S. government shutdown, a federal trial on corruption-related charges must go on against a now-retired Honolulu police chief and his former deputy prosecutor wife, a judge ruled Friday.
Louis and Katherine Kealoha are scheduled to go to trial in March on allegations they orchestrated the framing of an uncle for stealing their home mailbox. Current and former officers are co-defendants.
A judge previously appointed taxpayer-funded attorneys to represent them after determining that they can’t afford to hire their own lawyers.
Earlier this week, Katherine Kealoha’s attorney, Cynthia Kagiwada, filed a motion asking that the trial be postponed because she’s not being paid during the shutdown. The shutdown is impinging on her client’s right to effective counsel and prevents adequate trial preparation, Kagiwada said.
“Ms. Kealoha wants to go trial as soon as possible, but she needs to have an adequate defense,” Kagiwada said. U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Puglisi had granted an earlier request to postpone the trial to March, based on a review of Kealoha’s medical records.
Puglisi denied the latest request Friday, saying lawyers are used to a lag time in getting paid.
The case can’t become immobilized by the shutdown, Puglisi said. “The judiciary is not a political branch and we have to proceed and try to do our jobs to the best of our abilities.”
Puglisi said he will guarantee that the lawyers and defense experts will get paid eventually: “I don’t think you can get a better guarantee than a judge in federal court.”
But in denying the motion, he added, “we’ll continue to monitor the situation.”
He then closed the courtroom to have a discussion with the court-appointed attorneys about defense expert costs. He said it was appropriate to close the courtroom to other observers to prevent revealing any possible defense strategies.
The court-appointed lawyers representing the Kealohas, and one of their co-defendants, are private attorneys who agree to take on indigent clients for fees from the federal government that are less than what they could charge.
The Kealohas received attorneys for free after a judge reviewed their financial records and found their debts exceeded their assets. The four-bedroom house in the upscale Honolulu neighborhood of Hawaii Kai that the couple purchased in 2013 for $1.2 million is in foreclosure. It recently went on the market for $1.3 million.