Aki's lawyer grills police detective
By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer
The lawyer for Christopher Aki, the Kalihi man accused of murdering an 11-year-old Halawa girl, tried to chip away at the prosecution's case yesterday.
State Deputy Public Defender Todd Eddins, attorney for Aki, asked the lead homicide detective assigned to the case a series of questions about the adequacy of the police investigation into the December 2002 death of Kahealani "Kahea" Indreginal.
Detective Sheryl Sunia said police did not videotape the area of a state park in 'Aiea where the girl's body was found because videotaping is not standard procedure; did not go back to the site until the second day after the body was found; overlooked some tooth fragments at the time the body was found but collected them later; and found a glove on a trail near the area where the body was located but did not try to analyze it for evidence.
City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle said at the start of the trial on April 13 that Aki beat the girl to death with a pipe a day after smoking crystal methamphetamine. Aki, who at the time was the boyfriend of Kahealani's older half sister Tanya, lied to police several times, Carlisle said.
Eddins says Aki, 21, falsely confessed because the real killer, one of the girl's uncles, threatened to kill Aki if he told the truth. Eddins also maintains that police botched the investigation and stopped looking for other possible suspects when Aki falsely confessed on Dec. 15.
In the first of three interviews with police, a few hours before the body was discovered Dec. 13 off the 'Aiea Loop Trail, Aki denied any knowledge about what might have happened to the missing girl. In a second interview several hours after the body was found, Aki told police two of his friends killed Kahealani. Then, late on the night of Dec. 15, Aki told police he killed her.
Sunia, who said she had been with the homicide unit for about a year when she was assigned to the case, said she did not recall seeing a large rock within a few feet of where the girl's body was found.
The rock was recovered by an investigator from the public defender's office and was sent to a Mainland lab for analysis, Eddins said on the opening day of the trial.
He said the tests showed the girl's blood to be on the rock. Sunia said yesterday that the prosecutor's office did not inform her of the test results and that she did not know about the results until she read about recently it in a newspaper.
In response to earlier questions from Carlisle, Sunia said that after her third interview with Aki and listening to him confess, she was convinced that he had killed the girl and that no one else was involved.
Reach David Waite at 525-8030 or at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com.
