A state jury found two cousins accused of helping one of their girlfriends kill her sugar daddy not guilty Friday of murder.
The jury did, however, find Shaun Branco-Taguchi guilty of unlawfully possessing a firearm and arson. He faces maximum 10-year prison terms for each charge at sentencing in
December.
His lawyer Steven Nichols says Branco-Taguchi is pleased with the verdicts.
“We are happy. This is a win,” Nichols said.
After hearing the verdicts a smiling Branco-Taguchi turned to his wife in the courtroom and said, “Better than life, yeah?”
Life prison terms are what Branco-Taguchi and his cousin Shane Rodrigues were facing in connection with the June 2015 shooting death of 65-year-old William Aki. Police found Aki’s body in his Whitmore Village home with a gunshot wound to his chest and one to the back of the head.
Branco-Taguchi was
accused of firing the shot
to the back of Aki’s head.
Rodrigues was accused of providing the fatal weapon, a .22-caliber rifle. Both men were also charged with torching Aki’s car near Makua Cave after the slaying and of unlawfully possessing a firearm and ammunition.
Acting Circuit Judge
Paul B.K. Wong dismissed the arson charge against
Rodrigues before the case went to the jury. The jury found Rodrigues not guilty of the firearm and ammunition possession charges and
of being an accomplice to murder.
“We’re definitely
grateful for their verdicts,” Rodrigues’ lawyer Randall Hironaka said.
The state’s case relied heavily, and in many instances solely, on the testimony of 28-year-old Anjelita Rasa, who prosecutors said was Aki’s live-in girlfriend before Aki kicked her out two weeks before the killing. Prosecutors said Branco-Taguchi was Rasa’s “side salad” boyfriend.
Rasa admitted to firing the shot to Aki’s chest but, in a deal for her testimony, is facing a 20-year sentence for robbery instead of a life prison term for murder. She said Aki was not her boyfriend, but someone she used for a place to stay, a car to drive and money to buy drugs.
In closing arguments
Deputy Prosecutor Patricia Kickland told the jurors they don’t have to believe everything Rasa said.
The jurors told Kickland after the trial that they had a hard time believing Rasa.
“And it makes it very hard to get beyond a reasonable doubt when the credibility of your key witness is in question,” Gordon Riddick said after the court had
discharged him from his
duties as a juror.
“Beyond a reasonable doubt” is the standard jurors must apply to find guilt.
Riddick and jury foreman Patrick Tyrrell said Rasa’s testimony contradicted the physical evidence. For example, Rasa said that after she shot Aki and saw that
he was still alive, she ran out of the house and handed the rifle to Branco-Taguchi in the garage. She said Branco-Taguchi then reloaded the pump-action rifle, went into the house and fired the second shot.
Pump-action rifles
discharge spent shells only when they are reloaded, yet police found a spent .22-caliber shell inside the house.
Tyrrell and Riddick said they were also left wondering about the testimony of Rodrigues’ former girlfriend Jessica Samson.
Samson was charged with arson but, in a deal for her testimony, is facing a maximum one-year jail term for
a misdemeanor instead of
10 years for a felony. Wong ordered the jurors to disregard her testimony because after answering questions for the prosecutor, Samson refused to answer questions under cross-examination.
