State Circuit Judge Karen Ahn told two men who abducted a 17-year-old boy, handcuffed him and drove around with the boy in the car trunk that what they did was "horrible."

She also said Monday that putting a bag over Ezra Kualaau’s head and punching him with his hands still cuffed behind his back was "cowardly."

Still, rather than impose the mandatory 20-year prison terms for kidnapping, Ahn sentenced Bladesin-Isaiah Bailey and Andrew Josiah Rodriguez to eight-year prison terms Monday under a provision in state law that allows judges to give sentencing breaks to defendants who were under 22 when they committed their crimes and who have not been previously sentenced for any felonies.

Ahn also sentenced Rodriguez and Bailey to one year for assaulting Kualaau. But the judge said Rodriguez must serve nine years and that Bailey can serve his one-year term at the same time as his sentence for kidnapping, for a total of eight years.

Kualaau’s mother, Barbara, said the prison sentences should have been longer for the suffering she and her son continue to experience. But she said she has compassion for the parents of her son’s abductors for what their children put them through.

BAILEY and Rodriguez were 19 and 18, respectively, when they shoved Ezra Kualaau into the trunk of their car at Waiau District Park on May 15, 2010. They later released him on a trail in the back of Moanalua Valley with his hands still cuffed behind his back.

During the sentencing hearing, Ahn asked Rodriguez why he did it. He said wasn’t not sure.

"At the time I kinda was living carefree. I didn’t think of the consequences," Rodriguez said.

He said he wasn’t high at the time, but that he did have drugs in his system.

Bailey apologized for the kidnapping and for a prior robbery involving another teenager to which Ahn sentenced him Monday to five years in prison. Ahn said Bailey must serve the five years after completing the eight-year term for kidnaping Kualaau — for a total of 13 years.

Barbara Kualaau said her son chose not to attend Monday’s sentencing because he just wants the whole thing to be over. Kualaau said her son still has physical and emotional scars from his kidnapping.

"He still has nightmares," she said. "They cannot change any of that."

With his hands cuffed behind his back in the trunk of the car, Ezra Kualaau was able to reach into his pocket for his cellphone to call 911 and call and send text messages to his mother, he testified in the trial.

"That day I really thought if I didn’t find him in an hour or so after the call, I wasn’t going to see him again," Barbara Kualaau said.