Convicted shooter Dae Han Moon challenges murder verdict

A 22-year-old man awaiting sentencing in connection with the fatal 2016 Christmas Day shooting at an Ala Moana Center parking structure says he never should have stood trial for murder, let alone been found guilty, because only one doctor, not two as required by law, declared Steve Feliciano brain dead before allowing his organs to be harvested.

A state jury found Dae Han Moon guilty last month of Feliciano’s murder and using a firearm to commit the murder.

Ten days after the jury returned its verdicts, Moon’s lawyer, Victor Bakke, filed papers asking trial judge Karen Nakasone to nullify the verdicts and to dismiss the charges. Nakasone has scheduled a hearing on the requests for Nov. 13.

A city ambulance took Feliciano, 20, to The Queen’s Medical Center on Dec. 25, 2016, in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the back of his head.

Queen’s neurologist Dr. Kazuma Nakagawa declared Feliciano brain dead three days later but kept him on life support for two more days, Deputy Prosecutor Scott Bell said in response to Moon’s requests to nullify the guilty verdicts and dismiss the charges.

Feliciano was an organ donor. Doctors at Queen’s removed organs and tissue from Feliciano’s body on Dec. 30, then sent the remains to the city’s Department of the Medical Examiner.

According to state law, a person on artificial life support is determined dead when an attending physician and a consulting physician sign statements declaring the person brain dead. Only then can vital organs be removed for transplant and artificial life support withdrawn.

Bakke said until Bell filed his response last week, he didn’t know which or how many doctors were involved in declaring Feliciano brain dead because the state never provided any signed physician statements, despite his requests. He also said the state didn’t provide any brain dead declaration to the grand jury, so the grand jurors should not have charged Moon with murder.

The grand jury returned a murder indictment against Moon on Dec. 29, 2016, when Feliciano was on life support.

Bell said Deputy Honolulu Medical Examiner Masahiko Kobayashi performed Feliciano’s autopsy on Jan. 3, 2017, and determined that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. He said there is no evidence suggesting that Feliciano died as a result of the removal of organs or life support.

He also said the challenge to the indictment should have been made before trial and that the guilty verdicts make the challenge moot.

Bakke is not Moon’s first lawyer. He took over the case in January.

According to trial testimony, Feliciano and some friends went to the fifth level of Ala Moana Center’s Ewa parking structure to buy some marijuana from a certain individual. Moon and his friends, who were not selling the marijuana, showed up. The two groups got into a fight that ended when Moon shot Feliciano.