A former adult correctional officer at the Hawaii Community Correctional Center was sentenced Monday to eight years in a federal prison for his role in the brutal beating of an inmate and violating the man’s civil rights by conspiring to cover up the assault.
Jason Tagaloa, 31, and his two co-defendants — 38-year-old Craig Pinkney and 50-year-old Jonathan Taum — had all pleaded not guilty to assaulting the former inmate, 38-year-old Chawn Kaili, but a federal jury in Honolulu found all three guilty on July 7 following a three-week trial.
A fourth guard, Jordan DeMattos, previously pleaded guilty for his role in the assault and cover up, and testified for the government during the trial.
The defendants assaulted Kaili in the jail’s recreation yard. Over the course of two minutes, they punched and kicked the inmate in the head and body while he was lying face down in a pool of his own blood. Kaili’s nose, jaw and eye socket were broken during the attack.
At least a portion of the recreation yard assault was caught on surveillance video.
After the beating, the defendants wrote false reports in which they omitted almost all of the force they had used.
When the jail opened an investigation, the defendants met to get their stories straight and brainstorm false excuses they would give for having used force. The cover-up conspiracy included writing false reports, submitting false statements to internal affairs, and providing false testimony to disciplinary board members.
“As a correctional officer, Tagaloa accepted responsibility for ensuring the safe incarceration of inmates,” District of Hawaii U.S. Attorney Clare E. Connors said in a statement following the sentencing. “When he instead participated in the brutal assault of an inmate, he violated the inmate’s civil rights and then sought to cover it up.”
Tagaloa is the second of the three defendants to be sentenced. Taum, a supervisor whom authorities said led the cover-up conspiracy, was sentenced Nov. 16 to 12 years in prison.
Pinkney is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 5 by U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi, who presided over the trial.
Tagaloa, Pinkney, Taum and DeMattos all were fired by the state Department of Public Safety on Dec. 23, 2016.
Kaili, who was released from prison in 2020, filed a suit in state court in 2017, which alleged, among other accusations, that he was denied immediate medical treatment for his injuries.
Kaili’s lawsuit, which named the three convicted defendants — plus DeMattos, then-adult corrections officer Lt. Jon Waikiki and the late former HCCC warden Peter MacDonald — stated Kaili was so bloodied by the beating that HCCC personnel disposed of jail-issued clothing.
Kaili also alleged Taum, Pinkney, Tagaloa and DeMattos “comprised in part or whole a group of individuals who collectively referred to themselves as the ‘Alpha Dawgs’” and “that a purpose, if not the sole purpose, of the ‘Alpha Dawgs’ was the intentional violation of civil rights of incarcerated persons … often in connection with illegal interrogations” conducted by Pinkney, Tagaloa, DeMattos and/or Taum.
The suit claimed Pinkney, Tagaloa and DeMattos “each weighed in excess of 250 pounds” and that the Alpha Dawgs “used their positions of authority to intimidate and attempt to intimidate inmates.”
The lawsuit was dismissed on Feb. 28, 2020, because Kaili or his lawyers failed to file a pretrial statement within the time required by court rules.
An order issued on April 15, 2020, granted Kaili’s motion to set aside the lawsuit’s dismissal, but the state Judiciary website shows no further substantive filings.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
