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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, October 17, 2008

Alleged statement to officer thrown out

 •  Suspect in 1999 Hawaii murder tagged as threat in '96 memo

By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer

Statements that Darnell Griffin allegedly made to Honolulu police detective Sheryl Sunia about the Evelyn Luka murder case cannot be used against him because trial Judge Dexter Del Rosario said he did not believe sworn testimony from Sunia about the verbal exchange.

Sunia testified in a Sept. 24 hearing before Del Rosario that Griffin would not answer questions about the Luka case after he was arrested and was read his rights during a tape-recorded interview March 29 at the main Honolulu police station.

But after the tape recorder was shut off and Griffin was leaving the interview room, he allegedly made a statement that appeared to refer to the night Luka was attacked.

"I picked someone up and then took them back," Griffin allegedly said. "I don't hang out at that gay club. My son was born in '99. I am always home with my family. I'm gonna sue. This is just a black thing."

In the hearing, Griffin denied making those statements. He said that after he refused to speak with Sunia, she shut off the tape recorder and "just stared at me for a while with a scowl on her face."

Then, according to Griffin, Sunia said, "Now that we have the murderer, all we have to do is find personal belongings of the victim and we will have closure."

Griffin said he yelled back at Sunia, "You said you weren't going to railroad me."

He said he may have said his son was born in 1999, but he denied making the other statements.

"I was very upset," he told his lawyer, E. Edward Aquino.

Asked to place the level of his anger "on a scale of one to 10," Griffin answered, "At least a 10."

When Sunia described the exchange on the witness stand, she was vague about when it occurred and what exactly she said.

She testified she may have said, "I'm just trying to get the family closure," adding that the words weren't really directed at the defendant. She said she was was "just talking out loud."

Del Rosario upheld Aquino's argument that Sunia "provoked or goaded" Griffin into making a statement.

He noted that while Sunia is a 27-year veteran police officer and experienced homicide investigator, he had "difficulty in finding Detective Sunia's statements to be credible."

But the judge found the testimony of Griffin, a convicted murderer awaiting trial in a new murder case, "to be credible."

Sunia has had problems in court before.

When she was accused of perjury in a Circuit Court homicide case in 2003, HPD placed her under an Internal Affairs investigation and stripped her of her badge, gun and police powers.

She was reinstated after the Attorney General's office declined to prosecute her on the perjury charges.

Sunia is now suing HPD in federal court, alleging that the perjury charge and Internal Affairs investigation were retaliation for her claims of on-the-job sexual harassment.

That lawsuit, which includes two other HPD officers as plaintiffs, is scheduled to go to trial next month before Senior U.S. District Judge Samuel King.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.