The trial of three men charged with murder and attempted murder in the January 2004 shootings at Pali Golf Course, scheduled to begin in October, might be delayed to January 2009 — the fifth anniversary of the crime.

Or there may be no trial at all.

Defense lawyers and the prosecutor in the case told U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway yesterday that they will try to craft a new plea bargain by early September.

Those statements came after Mollway rejected plea deals the government had reached with two of the defendants — she has already rejected the third — which would have resulted in prison sentences of 27 1/2 years behind bars instead of life without parole for each of the three.

Mollway told the two defendants, Ethan "Malu" Motta and Kevin "Pancho" Gonsalves, that she did not believe they had provided "substantial assistance" to the government which would have qualified them for the lower sentences.

"In this case, the record is totally lacking in evidence that either defendant agreed to give information to the government or to testify on behalf of the government," Mollway said.

"That, typically, is the form of assistance" given by a defendant in a plea bargain, the judge said.

Motta's lawyer, Todd Eddins, and Gonsalves' lawyer, Clifford Hunt, then told Mollway that their clients were withdrawing from the plea deals and wished to go to trial.

Eddins, Hunt and Reggie Minn, who represents the third defendant, Rodney Joseph Jr., told Mollway that they would try to work with the government to craft a new plea deal.

The prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Brady, also said he would be working on a possible new plea bargain.

"I think we're going to work out alternatives to trial," Brady said.

Authorities say that Joseph, Motta and Gonsalves shot two men dead and critically injured a third during a showdown over protection of illegal gambling games in a day of bloody violence at the city's Pali Golf Course parking lot on Windward O'ahu.

As he had earlier in the Joseph case, Brady tried unsuccessfully to convince Mollway that, by agreeing to plead guilty in the case, the defendants had substantially assisted the government by avoiding the time, trouble and expense of a trial and possible appeal.

But Mollway disagreed.

"Pleading guilty does not in my view equate to substantial assistance," she said.

What assistance the three men can give to the government is unclear because they have adamantly insisted that they would not cooperate with the FBI or the Justice Department and would not testify about other crimes or against other criminal defendants.

In fact, their plea deals specifically stated that they would not cooperate or testify.

Cooperation was "a deal breaker," Brady said in court earlier this month. "They did not want to be considered rats."