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A man convicted of manslaughter in the child-abuse death of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter is getting a new trial.
A state judge ruled Wednesday that Joshua Kalili did not get a fair trial because certain testimony presented should not have been allowed.
Kalili, 27, went to trial before a state jury in August for murder in the death of Styzilee Reyes. By the start of the trial, Kalili and Reyes’ mother were married.
The Honolulu Medical Examiner says Styzilee Reyes died Oct. 21, 2014, from blunt impact to her abdomen which caused intestinal lacerations.
Before the jury started its deliberations, Circuit Judge Glenn Kim determined that the prosecutor had not presented sufficient evidence to support the murder charge and instructed the jurors to instead consider manslaughter in their deliberations.
The jury deliberated for less than a full day before finding Kalili guilty of manslaughter.
Kim scheduled sentencing for next month.
On Wednesday, Kim ruled that he should not have allowed trial testimony from the prosecution’s expert witness on child abuse and thus should not have allowed testimony on Reyes’ pre-existing injuries. He also ruled that those errors were compounded by the prosecutor’s statements to the jury that Reyes’ injuries were intentionally inflicted.
Kim scheduled Kalili’s new trial for March.
Kalili did not testify in the first trial. His lawyer told the jury that Reyes exhibited signs of the injuries that killed her at least nine days before she apparently fell from a stool in the bathroom on the day of her death. He also said someone other than Kalili could have caused the injuries.
