Former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha’s 99-year-old grandmother answered questions under oath for 6-1/2 hours Tuesday to preserve her testimony in case she is not available for Kealoha’s trial next month.

Kealoha, her retired Honolulu police chief husband, Louis Kealoha, and three former members of the Honolulu Police Department’s elite Criminal Intelligence Unit are scheduled to stand trial in U.S. District Court on charges that they schemed to stage a mailbox theft and frame a Kealoha relative for it, and lied about it to investigators.

The government wants to present testimony from Florence Puana, Katherine Kealoha’s grandmother, to present jurors with a motive. At the time of the alleged mailbox theft, Kealoha, her grandmother and an uncle were involved in a dispute over money from a reverse mortgage on the Puanas’ Maunalani Heights home.

Puana’s testimony was video recorded and will be played for the jury in case Puana is not available. The testimony includes Puana’s responses to direct-examination questions from government lawyers and cross-examination questions from each of the defendants’ lawyers.

The government requested to have Puana’s testimony recorded because she has already undergone one heart surgery and is scheduled for a second surgery.