A Circuit Court jury yesterday found a former District Court employee guilty on two felony counts of fixing traffic tickets in 2002.

Alberta Souza, 61, faces a maximum five years in prison and a $10,000 fine when she is sentenced by Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario Oct. 26.

Souza was a clerk at Wai'anae District Court when prosecutors said she dismissed a traffic ticket of someone she knew without court approval. Senior Deputy Attorney General Lawrence Goya said Souza also waived the fines and fees and shortened the length of a license suspension imposed on another acquaintance without approval.

The jury took about a day to find Souza guilty on those two charges. The jury failed to reach a verdict on a third charge that accused her of transferring a traffic ticket from the 'Ewa District Court to the Wai'anae District Court without court approval.

Neither Souza, nor her attorney, Eric Seitz, could be reached for comment yesterday.

At trial, the defense argued that the Wai'anae District Court is a busy place and that errors may have been made, but they weren't done so intentionally, Goya said.

Goya said he was pleased that the jury believed otherwise.

"Since you're part of the court you may think that somehow it's going to get overlooked and because of the volume of the work you think that maybe it may not necessarily get caught," he said.

Ticket-fixing was elevated from a misdemeanor to a felony following a scandal in the 1980s that involved a former courts administrator. Goya said the problem has dramatically decreased since then.