Defensive tackle Kennedy Tulimasealii should be allowed to rejoin the University of Hawaii football team if a state judge defers his no-contest pleas to assault, harassment, resisting arrest and criminal property damage, says his attorney, Michael Green.
Circuit Judge Christine Kuriyama was scheduled to decide whether to grant Tulimasealii’s request to defer his pleas or to sentence him on the charges Tuesday. She rescheduled the hearing to Friday to give the prosecutor time to compile restitution amounts for the criminal property damage charges and to determine how much time Tulimasealii spent behind bars before bailing out, in case she wants to sentence or order Tulimasealii to time served.
Tulimasealii pleaded no contest in June to two counts of misdemeanor assault and one count each of misdemeanor resisting arrest, petty misdemeanor harassment, and felony and petty misdemeanor criminal property damage. The felony criminal property damage charge is a Class C felony.
The college then dismissed Tulimasealii from the football team because under the school’s student-athlete code of conduct, any student-athlete convicted of or pleading guilty or no contest to a felony charge shall be permanently dismissed from the team.
Green said the code of conduct does not account for deferred pleas. He said that if Kuriyama defers the no-contest pleas, there would be no basis to support Tulimasealii’s dismissal from the team.
UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl on Tuesday said the university stands by a statement issued in June by the athletic department, which announced Tulimasealii’s dismissal for violating the student-athlete conduct code. “The code states that ‘any student-athlete convicted of or pleading guilty or no contest to a felony charge shall be permanently dismissed from the team,’” the statement said.
Deferrals are one-time breaks that judges can grant defendants. Instead of accepting a defendant’s guilty or no-contest plea, the judge would put it off for a period of time no longer than the maximum penalty for the charge.
Petty misdemeanor crimes are punishable by up to 30 days in jail, misdemeanors by up to one year in jail and Class C felonies by up to five years in prison.
At the end of the deferral period, if the defendant has stayed out of trouble with the law and has followed all of the conditions imposed by the court, the judge will dismiss the charge.
If a defendant violates the law or any of the court-imposed conditions, a judge can accept the guilty or no-contest pleas any time during the deferral period and impose sentence.
