Florence Puana celebrated her 100th birthday with about 100 family members and friends Sunday at a Mid Pacific Country Club ballroom in Kailua.
Puana, who turned 100 on Saturday, is the grandmother of former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha. She provided key testimony in Kealoha’s federal conspiracy and obstruction trial.
Charlotte Malott, one of Puana’s nine children, recapped some of the highlights of her mother’s life, with family and archival photographs. When she got to the part about the family home her parents had built in Maunalani Heights, it was apparent that the home continues to be a sore subject among the Puana family.
Florence Puana sold the home after Kealoha arranged a reverse mortgage on it. She sold the home to pay off the reverse mortgage and have some money left over for her children. She had promised her husband to leave something for their children.
>> Photo Gallery: Florence Puana celebrates 100th birthday
Because of her fragile health, federal prosecutors arranged for Puana to testify in April before the trial and to play a recording of her testimony for the jury. Puana sat through about 6-1/2 hours of questioning. The jurors heard only a portion of it because the rest was taken up by Kealoha’s court-appointed defense lawyer asking questions about topics the judge had already said he was not going to allow.
The jurors did not hear Puana refer to her granddaughter as “that devil.”
It took the jury less than two days to find Kealoha and her husband, retired Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha, guilty of scheming to frame Puana’s son, Gerard Puana, with stealing the Kealohas’ mailbox and of lying to investigators to cover up their actions.
The Kealohas each face 20-year prison terms at sentencing in October. The judge ordered only Katherine Kealoha taken into custody pending sentencing after the jury handed down its guilty verdicts in June.
The Kealohas face another federal criminal trial in January on bank fraud charges. Katherine Kealoha is facing a third federal criminal trial in May on charges accusing her of conspiring with her brother and others to distribute powerful prescription painkillers and of using her position as a deputy prosecutor to cover up their involvement in the conspiracy.
Florence and Gerard Puana sued Kealoha in state court in 2013 over proceeds from the reverse mortgage on the Maunalani Heights home and money her uncle said he gave to his niece for an investment hui.
Federal prosecutors in the Kealohas’ criminal trial presented evidence that the defendants staged the theft of the mailbox in retaliation for the Puanas’ civil lawsuit and to discredit Gerard Puana. Katherine Kealoha also filed a petition for the appointment of a conservator, claiming that her grandmother was unable to manage her own affairs.
A state judge found Florence Puana competent to handle her own affairs, but she and son Gerard lost their lawsuit against Kealoha. Another state judge ordered them to pay Kealoha $658,787 in damages.
Florence Puana paid approximately $108,000. They are appealing the awarding of certain damages and attorney fees. On Friday their lawyer filed a motion for a new trial based on evidence presented in the recent criminal trial that suggests Kealoha lied in the civil case.
And Gerard Puana filed a second federal lawsuit against the Kealohas and other HPD officers for framing him in the mailbox theft. He filed that lawsuit in December 2017, two months after a federal grand jury returned the criminal indictment against the Kealohas.
The federal lawsuit was put on hold pending the criminal case’s outcome.
Puana’s lawyer in the federal lawsuit said in a letter he sent to the court Wednesday that he plans to add Florence Puana as a plaintiff and, because of her advanced age, asked to have the case heard as soon as possible.
