EDITORIAL
Was justice served in Kahealani's murder?
The manslaughter verdict in the death of Kahealani Indreginal, we are certain, comes as a great disappointment to most of us.
Principal among the reasons for this is because 11-year-old Kahea clearly was murdered. The savage beating she suffered can only have been intended to kill her. Had it been interrupted minutes into the commission of this heinous crime by a single qualm of conscience on the part of the perpetrator, she likely would have survived.
AKI
KAHEALANI
Jury not to blame
The jurors who deliberated for four days before reaching their manslaughter finding are not to be blamed for the inconsistency between the mildness of their verdict and the savageness of the crime. Attorneys observing the trial of Christopher Aki, who now faces a maximum sentence of 20 years for manslaughter, suggest that the jurors in all likelihood were compelled to seek compromise.
The jurors were charged with choosing between unsatisfactory options:
• They could find Aki guilty of second-degree murder, accepting Prosecutor Peter Carlisle's argument that Aki was solely responsible for Kahea's death.
• They could credit any of the many doubts introduced by Aki's lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Todd Eddins, suggesting that Aki may have been present, may have been complicit, but surely couldn't have carried out this deed on his own.
Not the murder weapon
The city's medical examiner testified that the blood-stained rock that Eddins contends was wielded by another man to kill Kahea could not have been the murder weapon. But police failed to find the pipe that Aki, in one of his contradictory statements, said he had used to kill her.
In the end the jury decided, it appears, that the crime was too horrible to allow it to go completely unpunished, but the doubts were too strong to accept a life sentence for such a young defendant who, cleaned up and coached by his attorney, seemed sincere in his testimony.
The ice factor
But Carlisle pointed to Aki as an example of how the ravage of crystal methamphetamine alters personalities and endangers entire communities. He asked the jury to believe that Aki had systematically beaten Kahealani to death because, a day after he smoked ice, she had slapped him after he accidentally spit on her as they were eating.
Perhaps that's the unvarnished truth, but it seemed a stretch even before the trial.
The doubts entertained by the jury should concern this community. If Aki indeed was the sole, brutal perpetrator, the manslaughter verdict is entirely unsatisfactory.
If Aki didn't act alone, if the real story is not yet known, then the manslaughter verdict is a travesty.
But there seems no way for the community to find satisfaction in this verdict.
