Kealoha civil trial to get new date

Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha, wife of the Honolulu chief of police, has fired another volley in a legal dispute involving her family.

Kealoha’s 95-year-old grandmother, Florence Puana, and her uncle Gerard Puana are suing Kealoha in Circuit Court over money from a reverse mortgage on the grandmother’s house in Maunalani Heights. Also at issue is money her uncle claims he gave her to put into an investment hui.

A trial in that case had been scheduled to start this week.

Instead, on Tuesday the court will consider multiple pretrial motions by both sides and set a new trial date.

Kealoha asked the court to reschedule the trial in part because she is asking another judge to appoint a conservator for her grandmother. A hearing on the petition is scheduled for late January.

In the petition, Kealoha says her grandmother is impaired and unable to manage her property and business affairs effectively. She is asking the state Probate Court to appoint someone other than her uncle as conservator because she claims her uncle has manipulated her grandmother and "has a long and colorful police record."

The petition, filed on Dec. 1, includes a summary of Gerard Puana’s arrests.

Among them is a case in which he is accused of stealing the Kealohas’ mailbox from their Kahala home.

That case went to trial in federal court Dec. 4, but ended in a mistrial when Chief Louis Kealoha gave unsolicited testimony about Puana’s criminal record. A new trial is scheduled for May.

Puana’s lawyer told the jury in opening statements that Puana did not steal the mailbox and that the Kealohas are saying he did to discredit him in the civil case.

The petition for a conservator also lists charges that Puana was able to expunge from his criminal record and alleged crimes for which Puana was never charged.

A Honolulu Police Department spokeswoman says police reports of cases that have been closed are generally releasable after personal and confidential information is redacted.

In some instances closed reports are not releasable, such as when the case is pending litigation or involves a minor.

Kealoha claims in her petition that one of the arrests is for a crime involving a minor. She submitted two documents relating to that arrest. All personal information, including the name of the minor, is blacked out.

One of the documents is an HPD report. The other is a document from the Social Services Division of the state Department of Human Services.

The prosecutor’s office says Kealoha is on indefinite unpaid personal leave from her job as head of the Career Criminal Unit.