Bail-jumper faces extended sentence

Advertiser Staff

A man who tried to flee to the Philippines last summer on the day he was supposed to be sentenced on multiple sex-assault charges has pleaded guilty to a bail-jumping charge.

Jovie Adora faces an extra five years or more behind bars in addition to the 20-year sentence he is serving for the sex-assault convictions.

Adora was sentenced in October to the 20-year term after he pleaded guilty in March to sexually assaulting four teenage girls. Adora was supposed to be sentenced in June, but left the Circuit Court building after telling his attorney he was having chest pains and needed to see a doctor.

Adora caught a ride to the airport and bought a one-way ticket to Guam. His final destination was the Philippines.

Guam police arrested Adora as he got off a Continental Airlines flight and returned him to Hawai'i.

Circuit Judge Derrick Chan accepted Adora's guilty plea on the bail-jumping charge Friday and warned him that the sentence on the escape charge could be extended because of his earlier convictions on the sex-assault charges.

Chan is scheduled to sentence Adora on June 9. City Deputy Prosecutor Scott Bell has said he intends to ask for an extended term for Adora on the bail-jumping offense and that it be made to run consecutive to the sex-assault sentence.

If Adora is allowed to serve the bail-jumping term concurrently with the term imposed for the sex-assault conviction, he will have suffered no penalty for the bail-jumping offense, Bell said.