Same video, different findings

Lawyers for the state and murder defendant Christopher Deedy told the jury in closing arguments of the U.S. State Department special agent’s retrial Tuesday that they do agree on several points.

One is that Deedy, 30, should face only a murder charge because he intentionally and knowingly killed 23-year-old Kollin Elderts in a Waikiki McDonald’s restaurant in November 2011. Prosecutors says that makes Deedy guilty while defense lawyers say Deedy was justified in fatally shooting Elderts and is therefore not guilty of murder.

Another point of agreement is that both sides say it doesn’t matter which of the three shots Deedy fired from his semiautomatic handgun killed Elderts, the first, second or third.

And thirdly, both sides say they are grateful there is security video of the shooting and of the events leading up to it.

"The video doesn’t lie. It doesn’t forget. It has no bias," said Deputy Prosecutor Janice Futa.

Defense lawyer Thomas Otake said, "The video shows what it shows. It is what it is."

What the video shows, however, is open to widely divergent interpretations, as Otake’s and Futa’s closing arguments demonstrated. Also, the stop-frame video shows only images recorded roughly one second apart and does not include sound.

Otake said the video shows Elderts attacked Deedy as the federal agent was exercising his discretion as a law enforcement officer to intervene in what he saw was an increasingly hostile and potentially violent situation involving Elderts and his friend Shane Medeiros picking on another customer.

"(Deedy) had no idea he was going to be threatened when he showed his badge. He had no idea Elderts was going to get so upset," Otake said.

Futa said the video shows that Deedy was the aggressor who threatened Elderts. She said Deedy escalated the situation in a misguided attempt to assist a customer who didn’t need or ask for his help.

She said Deedy made many mistakes leading up to the shooting, the first and biggest being taking his gun with him to go drinking with his college roommate Adam Gutowski. She said another mistake was failing to identify himself as a law enforcement officer.

Otake told the jurors Deedy did show his badge to Elderts and Medeiros and identified himself as an officer. He also said Deedy was not drunk.

Futa said that when Deedy realized he had inserted himself deeper than he should have, his inexperience and ego prevented him from just stepping out of the situation and retreating.

Otake said Deedy could not retreat because the safety of others was still at risk.

Deedy is standing trial a second time because the first one last year ended with the jurors deadlocked between guilty of murder and acquittal. They had no other options.

In the current trial, Circuit Judge Karen Ahn gave the jurors four other options. She told them they can consider finding Deedy guilty of manslaughter for recklessly killing Elderts or killing him while experiencing an extreme mental or emotional disorder. Ahn also told the jurors they can consider finding Deedy guilty of assault for intentionally or recklessly causing serious injury to Elderts.

Otake told the jurors only murder applies because Deedy did not recklessly kill or injure Elderts or intend to injure him.

Futa did not discourage the jurors from considering reckless manslaughter but did tell them that because Deedy’s actions resulted in death, not injury, they should not consider finding him guilty of assault.

Both Otake and Futa told the jurors they should not consider extreme mental or emotional disorder manslaughter because that is a defense that Deedy did not assert.

The defenses Deedy are claiming are that he was justified in using deadly force to defend himself against further assault from Elderts and to defend Gutowski against further assault at the hands of Medeiros. He is also claiming that he was justified in using deadly force in the performance of his duties as a law enforcement officer. Deedy claims that Elderts attacked him when he tried to arrest Elderts.