Kealohas’ trial underway over alleged staged theft of couple’s mailbox

It’s put-up-or-shut-up time for federal prosecutors in the conspiracy trial of retired Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha and his wife, former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha.

Lawyers for the government, the Kealohas and the three former and current Honolulu police officers on trial with the Kealohas are scheduled to finalize their picks this morning for the 12 jurors and five alternates who will hear the case over the next several months. After that the lawyers for all of the parties will present opening statements, and the government will start presenting its evidence.

The trial is the culmination of a nearly two-year-long FBI and federal grand jury investigation that resulted in the indictment of the Kealohas, Lt. Derek Wayne Hahn, officer Minh-Hung “Bobby” Nguyen and retired Maj. Gordon Shiraishi.

The indictment was split into two trials: the current one, over the alleged staged theft of the Kealohas’ mailbox involving all of the defendants, and a later bank fraud trial involving just the Kealohas, scheduled for October.

The investigation also resulted in a drug conspiracy indictment against Katherine Kealoha and her brother Rudolph B. Puana. That trial is scheduled for January.

So far, four defendants, who were either charged separately or indicted with the Kealohas, have pleaded guilty and are expected to testify as government witnesses. One defendant is expected to testify in both the mailbox and drug trials, another in just the mailbox case and two in the bank fraud trial.

The current trial is one of the most anticipated in Hawaii in a long time and the first involving alleged corruption by government officials in decades. After a federal grand jury returned the first indictment in October 2017, the government has been releasing details about the case in unsealed documents, pretrial motions and public hearings on the motions that further grabbed the public’s attention.

Louis Kealoha was the chief of the largest police department in the state at the time he is accused of committing the crimes for which he is on trial. His wife was a supervisor in the city Department of the Prosecuting Attorney. Hahn and Nguyen were assigned to the Honolulu Police Department’s elite Criminal Intelligence Unit; Shiraishi was their commander.

The Kealohas, Hahn, Nguyen and Shiraishi are accused of staging the theft of the mailbox in front of the Kealohas’ Kahala home, framing Katherine Kealoha’s uncle for it and lying about what they did to investigators.

Katherine Kealoha had just been sued by her uncle Gerard Puana and grandmother Florence Puana over some of the proceeds of a reverse mortgage on the grandmother’s home. The government says the defendants framed Gerard Puana to discredit him in the civil case.

The government says the Kealohas were spending more than they earned and made up the difference by taking money from the Puanas and others, including two minors. Katherine Kea­loha was the court-appointed trustee of the minors’ money.

U.S. Chief Judge J. Michael Seabright granted the government’s request to present to the jury evidence of the defendants’ motive. The government had intended to present Florence Puana as its first witness, but the 99-year-old recently underwent heart surgery and her doctor has not cleared her to take the witness stand. The government still wanted to start its presentation with testimony from Puana that was videotaped last month. Seabright, however, has yet to rule on what portions of the more than six-hour deposition can be shown to the jury.