Katherine Kealoha diagnosis raises questions about her city job

After a jury convicted former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha of multiple felony counts, the lead federal prosecutor described her as a chronic malingerer, someone who feigned medical ailments to avoid accountability for her actions.

“When she is under the microscope, Katherine Kea­loha claims bad health as a shield to cover her misdeeds,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat wrote in a June 27 brief arguing for Kealoha’s incarceration. “But her health is suddenly no issue when she turns the scope on others.”

Kealoha’s health emerged as an issue not just in the recently concluded federal conspiracy trial, which at one point was delayed because she was dealing with a medical matter. One of her lawyers said it was cancer.

The status of her health also surfaced in several court cases dating to 2013 and has raised questions about her handling of what was billed in 2014 as the largest indictment in state history.

On May 1 of that year, a grand jury indicted nine people on 414 counts ranging from possession of gambling devices to money laundering.

But a judge about seven months later tossed out the indictment, finding that Kealoha and a colleague committed prosecutorial misconduct in their presentation of evidence to the grand jury. A second indictment, likewise obtained by Kealoha, also was dismissed, with another judge citing prosecutorial misconduct.

As she was preparing to prosecute that case, Kea­loha was putting off attempts by an opposing attorney to get her to answer questions in a civil lawsuit that accused Kealoha of stealing money from her grandmother, Florence Puana, and Puana’s son, Gerard.

Kealoha produced a letter from her doctor indicating that the deputy prosecutor at times was unable to go to court or answer questions in a deposition. The raising of the medical issue delayed proceedings in the Puana lawsuit by months.

Kealoha’s health received renewed attention when U.S. District Judge Leslie Koba­yashi issued an order on June 24 unsealing dozens of files related to the federal criminal case against Gerard Puana, who was charged with destruction of the Kahala mailbox of Katherine Kealoha and her husband, Louis Kealoha, the former chief of police, in 2013.

The criminal case against Puana eventually was dropped, and federal investigators subsequently turned their attention to the Kealohas and an elite police squad that reported to the chief back then. The federal probe resulted in the conviction last month of the Kealohas and two police officers, finding all four guilty of conspiracy and obstruction charges for trying to frame Puana for stealing the mailbox and then lying to federal investigators.

The letter from Katherine Kealoha’s doctor that became public via Kobayashi’s order revealed that in February 2014 the deputy prosecutor was dealing with what the physician described as a “serious medical condition.”

Dr. Jennifer Ito, who had been treating Kealoha for the condition since June 2013, said her patient was undergoing tests, was intermittently hospitalized and the medication she was taking could significantly affect her cognitive ability, “making it difficult at times for her to work, be involved in legal proceedings or to perform her activities of daily living,” according to Ito’s Feb. 13, 2014, letter.

At Ito’s direction, Kealoha was on medical leave at the time, and the physician believed her patient was “presently unable to perform any sustained activity which requires mental focus or concentration, such as going to court or answering questions in a deposition,” Ito wrote.

That letter was turned over by Kealoha’s lawyer to opposing counsel in the Puana lawsuit to explain why Kealoha had not resumed answering questions for a deposition that started but was not finished in June 2013.

Attorney Gerald Kura­shima, who represented the Puanas in their March 2013 lawsuit against Katherine Kealoha, said his repeated attempts to complete Kealoha’s deposition were unsuccessful for more than a year, and her lawyers cited her medical condition.

“Due to some rather debilitating health problems she is dealing with, we have been unable to present her to complete her deposition,” attorney Anthony Wong, who represented Kealoha, wrote in a court filing in the Puana case on May 12, 2014.

Yet 11 days earlier, Kealoha was fit enough to appear before the grand jury and question witnesses in the gambling-machine case. She persuaded the panel to issue the 414-count indictment, the largest in state history.

Employment records

If Kealoha were dealing with a serious medical condition that affected her ability to work and prosecute cases, it wasn’t reflected in her employment records during that period.

In May and April of 2014, Kealoha only claimed one day of sick leave, according to records the Honolulu Star-Advertiser obtained from the prosecutor’s office showing the days she took leave from work.

In February 2014, the month her physician said Kealoha was on medical leave, the deputy prosecutor took about four days of sick leave, 15 of vacation and one of holiday, covering the whole month, the city records show.

Kealoha’s medical ailment didn’t stop her from appearing in court multiple times in late 2013 ­— the period in which she was dealing with the health issue — to prosecute the ill-fated gambling case.

Court records show Kea­loha from October to December 2013 attended five hearings about gambling machines that were seized by the city.

In October, November and December of that year, Kealoha did not take any sick days, city records show. She did use nearly nine vacation days over those three months, according to the records.

Even as Kealoha was preparing for and participating in the gambling case, the resumption of her Puana deposition on dates in August, September and November 2013 were postponed, with her legal representatives saying she was on medical leave or that they could not contact her, according to correspondence from attorney Bill McCorriston’s office that Kurashima provided to the Star-Advertiser. McCorriston represented Kealoha at the time.

“If she was suffering from a debilitating condition, what was she doing getting a 414-count grand jury indictment?” said Keith Kiuchi, attorney for Tracy Yoshimura, one of the nine who were charged in the now-­dismissed indictment. “Either the doctor was not telling the truth or (Kealoha) clearly was in no condition to get that indictment.”

Brooks Baehr, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, told the Star-Advertiser that no evidence was found in that office’s files showing that Kealoha presented a letter from Ito about being treated for a condition that could affect her ability to perform in court.

“This office would not allow anyone to work in a capacity that requires critical cognitive ability if a physician indicated that ability was significantly compromised,” Baehr said in a statement.

From June 2013 through February 2014, the period covered by Ito’s letter, Kea­loha claimed an average of just over two days of sick leave per month, city records show. She also averaged about three-and-a-half days of vacation time monthly during that period.

During the period, the office was headed by Keith Kaneshiro, who is on paid leave and is the target of the same public corruption investigation that ensnared Kealoha, one of his chief deputies.

Diagnosis questioned

Kealoha’s health likewise became an issue in Puana’s 2014 criminal trial over the Kealoha mailbox.

Because Kealoha used the Ito letter to raise the issue of her mental capacity in the civil case, Alexander Silvert, the deputy federal public defender who represented Gerard Puana in the criminal case, cited the same letter to question Kealoha’s credibility in identifying his client in June 2013 as the mailbox thief, according to court documents that were unsealed by Kobayashi’s order.

Silvert also raised the possibility that the letter was bogus, noting that Kealoha and Ito were longtime friends and Ito’s brother, Brandon Ito, had worked with Kealoha, invested in at least one financial hui with her and was an officer with Kealoha in a limited liability company, according to the May 29, 2014, court filing by Silvert.

Given those personal relationships, Silvert questioned whether Ito’s diagnosis and letter were fraudulent, “designed to allow Mrs. Kealoha to stop any further deposition in the civil case … which is exactly what has occurred,” he wrote.

Ito and her brother declined comment.

Earle Partington, Katherine Kealoha’s current attorney, said he couldn’t comment on what happened in 2013 and 2014 because he didn’t represent her then and was unaware of what happened.

The lawyers who represented Kealoha at that time did not respond to requests for comment.

Kurishima said he was finally able to finish Kealoha’s deposition in September 2014 — about 15 months after it started. His clients lost the civil trial.

Citing the Ito letter, Silvert sought and was granted subpoenas to obtain Kealoha’s employment records from the prosecutor’s office and her medical records from Ito.

The prosecutor’s office, however, didn’t cooperate initially.

It would not allow an investigator from Silvert’s agency into the prosecutor’s office to serve the subpeona and then subsequently barred a deputy U.S. marshal with the subpoena from entering the office as well, according to Silvert.

Only after he called the city’s Department of Corporation Counsel, which has its civil attorneys, and threatened to contact the media about a law enforcement agency refusing to accept a federally approved subpoena was the problem resolved, said Silvert, who is credited with providing federal authorities with information that triggered the ongoing corruption probe.

Baehr said the prosecutor’s current leadership is different than in 2014 and has no knowledge of the subpoena attempts back then.

The court order to unseal the Puana-related documents was triggered by a motion from the nonprofit Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest, which noted that many documents were made confidential without any public explanation.

Four days after Judge Kobayashi issued her initial order, she amended it, noting that “upon further review” some of the documents that had been unsealed must be re-sealed. The Ito letter was among those.

During that brief window, however, Wheat, the federal prosecutor, was able to refer to the Ito letter in his June 27 public filing, which argued that Kealoha should be taken into custody immediately.

U.S. District Chief Judge J. Michael Seabright agreed, placing Kealoha in federal detention on June 28 pending her October sentencing. The other defendants remain free until sentencing in October.

The fallout from Kealoha’s medical condition can be traced to a June 19, 2013, civil deposition that was not completed.

Although Kealoha was answering questions about a lawsuit that was unrelated to her city job, Kealoha did not take any leave that day, according to city records.