The new court-appointed lawyer for former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha on Thursday asked
for a delay in her upcoming trials.
Kealoha and her husband, retired Police Chief Louis Kealoha, face an
Oct. 21 trial on bank fraud and identity theft, but that date is expected to be pushed back. By how much, though, is unclear.
Katherine Kealoha and her brother, Dr. Rudolph Puana, also face a Jan. 14 trial on charges of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, but that also is expected to be delayed.
Attorney Gary Singh, who was appointed a week ago to represent Kealoha in the two coming trials, told U.S. District Chief Judge J.
Michael Seabright that he would like to delay the bank fraud one until next year, perhaps January.
“I wasn’t thinking that long, Mr. Singh,” Seabright replied.
The judge said the next case won’t be nearly as complicated and involved as the conspiracy trial that the Kealohas and three other defendants just went through and that on paper the former looks like a “run-of-the-mill bank fraud case.”
The Kealohas and two police officers were convicted last month of using their public positions to conspire to frame Katherine Kealoha’s uncle in the alleged theft of the couple’s Kahala mailbox in 2013 and then attempting to obstruct a federal investigation.
The two upcoming trials stem from the same public corruption investigation that federal authorities started in 2015 and that
is continuing. The probe
led to indictments of the five who were just tried. Only one of the five was
acquitted.
The scheduling of the bank fraud trial will affect when the next one will be held, given that Singh is handling both.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat, lead prosecutor in the cases, told Seabright by phone at Thursday’s hearing that
he expects the government to take four to five days to present its case in the bank fraud trial.
Seabright said he anticipates both trials to take about two weeks each.
The judge directed Singh to consult with the other
attorneys to see whether they can agree on new trial dates. If they can’t, Singh was told to file a motion within a week to ask for the delays.
