Convict receives 40 years for home invasion robbery

A 36-year-old man who beat a murder charge connected to a 2007 Maili home invasion robbery was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years in prison for that robbery.

In March, a jury found Patrick Deguair guilty of first-degree robbery, two counts of kidnapping, first-degree burglary and four firearms-related charges in connection with the home invasion.

Deguair is already serving 20 years for an Aiea pool hall robbery committed in 2008.

Judge Glenn Kim rejected a plea by Deguair’s attorney Megan Kau for concurrent sentences, saying that Deguair’s "outrageous behavior" would not be tolerated by the court. In the 2007 robbery, Deguair and three other people disguised as federal DEA agents burst into a home and robbed the residents at gunpoint.

Kim ruled that Deguair’s prison sentence for the robbery in Maili will begin after he finishes his 20-year sentence for robbing a pool hall called Aiea Cue.

The judge also grouped the eight convictions from the Maili robbery into two groups: firearms-related offenses and the other offenses. Each group has a maximum prison term of 20 years and the sentence for one group must run consecutive to the other, Kim ordered.

Kau said Deguair will appeal the consecutive sentence ruling.

Deguair has appeared before Kim for three different cases, including the Aiea Cue robbery and a murder charge that Kim dismissed.

Kim said that in 2012 Deguair was given concurrent sentences for the Aiea Cue robbery because he didn’t have a criminal record at the time.

This time, Deguair has felony convictions from the Aiea Cue case and the offense is more egregious, Kim said.

"This defendant was clearly the ringleader of this whole operation and that speaks to his characteristics," he said.

In a separate case, the state accused Deguair of killing Jermaine Duckworth, a fellow suspect in the Maili home invasion. Prosecutors contended that Deguair killed Duckworth for "ratting" him out to police.

Duckworth’s body was found at the bottom of a cliff near Yokohama Bay one week before the Aiea Cue robbery.

Deguair stood trial two times for the murder charge. Both times juries deadlocked. In the second trial, in 2011, Kim dismissed the murder charge because it was the second time a jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charge.

During the 2011 trial, the jury found Deguair guilty of kidnapping Duckworth, but Kim threw out the kidnapping verdict because of juror misconduct. The state is appealing Kim’s dismissal of the murder charge and the kidnapping verdict.

The robbery charge in the Maili robbery has a mandatory 10-year prison term. The Hawaii Paroling Authority will determine when Deguair is eligible for parole later this year.