For a prosecutor, taking a domestic violence case to a jury usually is a dicey proposition and often results in an acquittal.
The August trial of Jerome Kealoha Jr. was no exception.
Not only did the case illustrate the challenges domestic-abuse prosecutions can present, it underscored how unpredictable and volatile such prosecutions can be.
The chief challenge in this trial: overcoming the recanting of the key witness, Kealoha's girlfriend, who told jurors she lied when she reported to police a year earlier that her boyfriend beat her.
Also, the police who responded to the initial domestic-dispute call in July 2007 took no photographs of Angela Olsen's injuries because none of the officers had a camera. That provided an opening for Kealoha's attorney to challenge the charges.
Olsen didn't just change her story. She was arrested for her courtroom behavior during a break in the trial, though the drama unfolded outside the presence of the jury.
After the proceedings had finished for the day, Olsen began berating a prosecution witness (her mother), the prosecutor and a bailiff. Olsen was held in contempt by Judge Michael Town, and while several sheriff deputies tried to take her into custody, she resisted and allegedly struck and bloodied a deputy's nose during the courtroom scuffle. Olsen spent the rest of the five-day trial in jail.
The jury, after two days of deliberations, acquitted Kealoha of four of the six charges he faced, couldn't reach a decision on a fifth and convicted him of a sixth, misdemeanor abuse of a household member. He was sentenced to time served — more than a year in jail.
Prosecutors say taking domestic-abuse cases to a jury is risky, especially misdemeanor ones.
Victims often recant, minimize the violence or are uncooperative. Injuries often aren't evident or are relatively minor. The crime often involves the complicated dynamics of an intimate relationship gone awry, something that can confound those not familiar with the power and control issues of domestic abuse.
"The jurors are thinking, 'If it's so bad, why doesn't she leave?' " said Rom Trader, the deputy prosecutor who heads the domestic violence and juvenile offender division. "Or, 'If the victim put up with the abuse, who are we to say it's a crime?' "
Even cases considered solid by prosecutors can fall flat in the eyes of jurors.
"No matter how strong the case appears, when you get into court with 12 jurors, it's a complete crapshoot," said Maurice Arrisgado, a senior deputy prosecutor.
The recanting of a chief witness is a common hurdle.
For a variety of reasons, victims will change their story even though the prosecutor's office has a policy of not dropping cases once it determines sufficient evidence exists to prove the charges. The no-drop policy is intended to remove any incentive for a suspect to try to pressure the victim to change her story.
"We have victims who are scared to death of these people," Trader said.
He said it's not uncommon for victims to tell the truth when police arrive, then change their stories after time passes and the cases are ready to go to court. "We don't blame them for that. It's just a reality."
In one noteworthy court case this year, a woman who lost most of her left arm in a traffic accident stemming from a domestic dispute testified that she was to blame for the 2007 crash, contradicting what she had told a paramedic and doctor immediately after the incident. Lise Solomua Alatini had said then that her male passenger had kicked the steering wheel while she was driving, prompting her to lose control on H-1 Freeway near the airport.
Iovani Alatini, her husband, was charged with second-degree assault in the case. At his trial in September, Lise Alatini said she was driving drunk, speeding and punching her husband just before the crash.
During breaks in the trial, the couple sat together on a bench outside the courtroom, consoling each other.
The judge eventually declared a mistrial after the jury was unable to reach a verdict.
In the Kealoha case, Olsen testified that she lied to police to get Kealoha in trouble because he was seeing another woman.
Yet what she initially told police — that Kealoha beat her — was corroborated by her mother, who gave investigators a statement at the crime scene about witnessing the beating and whose trial testimony was consistent with her original statement. Also, the police officer who responded to the initial call, Terrance Hibbert, said a crying, frightened Olsen told him that Kealoha caused her injuries during an argument. The officer said he could see that Olsen's mouth was bleeding, she had a swollen lip and cuts on her neck.
The defense claimed Olsen was emotionally distraught because Kealoha was cheating on her and because she had recently learned that her unborn child — she was seven months pregnant with their baby — had significant health issues and probably wasn't going to survive. Olsen's injuries, the defense argued, happened during a struggle as she tried to block Kealoha from leaving her apartment or were from other sources.
Although injury photos are considered important in domestic violence prosecutions, Hibbert told Kealoha's attorney that he was unable to take photos because the Honolulu Police Department doesn't issue beat officers cameras. The other officers who responded also didn't have cameras.
"What's the one thing you do to investigate allegations of domestic violence?" asked defense attorney Richard Gronna in his closing argument. "You take a picture. This is standard procedure in an investigation."
Photos of bruises on Olsen's body were taken several days after the beating, following complaints to police of two other alleged incidents involving Kealoha. By then, the case had become a felony investigation assigned to a detective.
Prosecutors say it is not uncommon in misdemeanor cases to get no injury photos from police, even though they have told HPD about the importance of having such evidence.
Without photos, "it's like going into battle with one hand behind your back," said Arrisgado, the senior deputy prosecutor.
The issue was important enough that in late 2004 the prosecutor's office used a federal grant to purchase 20 digital cameras to give to police for domestic abuse investigations.
"In a perfect world, you would have all the means to do your job," Trader said. "But (police) are affected by budget constraints like everyone else."
Maj. Carlton Nishimura, who heads HPD's criminal investigation division, said the department recently obtained a $60,000 grant to purchase equipment, including cameras, to combat violence against women. CID investigates all felony abuse cases and misdemeanor ones in which arrests weren't made at the crime scene.
Investigators in his division realize the importance of injury photos, Nishimura said. If CID gets a domestic abuse case in which the investigating patrol officer didn't take photos, CID will return to the scene to get them, he said.
"We feel it's necessary," Nishimura said. "It's not a crime we can let go and do a poor investigation on."
Nishimura said he couldn't speak to why patrol division officers, who he doesn't oversee, sometimes fail to take injury photos.
Of the 1,000-plus misdemeanor domestic abuse cases O'ahu prosecutors get each year, less than 10 percent typically go to trial, and the majority of those usually result in acquittals.
Most of the nontrial cases are resolved with plea agreements, with the defendant pleading guilty as charged, guilty to a lesser offense or no contest.
When weighing the risks and strengths of a case, prosecutors say they may try to get the defendant to plead to a lesser offense or one with lesser penalties, so they can be sure the offender suffers some consequences and is held accountable, including having to attend a domestic-violence intervention program.
They judge success, they say, not by a conviction as charged and a jail term but on whether the offender's behavior is changed.
But critics say prosecutors are too quick to reach plea agreements, resulting in some perpetrators getting but a slap on the wrist.
To get a sense of the challenges prosecutors face in domestic-abuse trials, The Advertiser picked the Kealoha case to sit through from among several trials that were being conducted in late August. The newspaper observed the entire trial, from jury selection to verdict.
Jurors acquitted Kealoha of burglary, robbery, criminal property damage and terroristic threatening charges, largely because the evidence was weak, according to one juror.
The potential volatility of such cases surfaced when Kealoha's girlfriend was involved in the courtroom scuffle. Olsen recently pleaded guilty to second-degree assault of a law enforcement officer, a misdemeanor, and is scheduled to be sentenced in February..
Another indication of the potential volatility: When police attempted to arrest Kealoha in 2007, he barricaded himself in his O'ahu home, told officers he had a gun and threatened to set the gasoline-doused house on fire, according to court testimony. That prompted police to shut down the neighborhood and bring in the SWAT team.
After about two hours, Kealoha emerged from the home, drinking a can of beer, according to court testimony. He didn't have a gun, nor was the house doused with gasoline.
Kealoha, unable to post bail, remained in jail for more than a year while his court case proceeded. By the time he was sentenced for the abuse charge in October, he had already served more time than the maximum one year set for that charge, so the court released him that day.
Before his release, a beaming Olsen anxiously waited in a courtroom hallway contemplating their future.
"We're just going to take it day by day," she said. "It's been a long road. We made it. We're going to change things."
Asked what they intended to do first once they reunited, Olsen said they would visit the grave site of their daughter, Janae, who was born and died from natural causes while Kealoha was incarcerated.
Shortly after that cemetery visit, the couple got married.
Reach Rob Perez at rperez@honoluluadvertiser.com.
