The federal prosecution in the forced-labor trial of the operators of Aloun Farms hit a snag Tuesday when the lead attorney was excused from the case for health reasons after she acknowledged making misstatements before the grand jury.
The remaining two prosecutors asked for a recess in the trial until Friday to enable two senior Justice Department civil rights attorneys from Washington, D. C. to travel here and assist in the case.
But lawyers for defendants Alec and Mike Sou suggested that the prosecution was also asking for help because of the misstatements about recruitment fees paid by Thai laborers to come to Hawaii and work on the farms.
Susan French, the Justice Department civil rights attorney from Washington who is the lead prosecutor, had asked a grand jury witness whether he knew under the visa program that the Thai laborers could not be assessed recruitment fees.
At the time, the law didn’t prohibit the fees.
"From our perspective the government’s entire case is unraveling because it was based on a faulty premise," Alec Sou’s lawyer, Thomas Bienert Jr., told U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway.
Mollway recessed the trial for the afternoon but ordered the prosecution to resume presenting witnesses this morning.
The trial of the Sous on 12 felony charges of forced labor and related counts was in the second day of what’s expected to be a more than monthlong proceeding.
They are accused of illegally bringing in 44 Thai nationals in 2004 to obtain "cheap and compliant" labor, housing workers in substandard conditions and forcing them to work under threat of deportation.
The impoverished Thai nationals borrowed money to pay recruitment fees of up to $20,000 eachwith about $2,500 for each worker going to Aloun Farms, according to the indictment and prosecution.
In the morning session Tuesday under questioning by Mollway, French said her remark to a witness before the grand jury that indicted the Sous was "not an accurate statement of law."
"I would agree it (recruitment fees) was not specifically prohibited as it now is," French told the judge.
Mollway ordered the prosecutors not to suggest that the fees were illegal.
The witness before the grand jury was Matee Chowsanitphon, whom the prosecution has described as the middleman between the Thais who recruited the laborers and Aloun Farms.
Chowsanitphon, 57, a U.S. citizen for about 16 years who was born in Bangkok and is now a California resident, took the witness stand in the morning and testified he pleaded guilty to visa fraud in the case.
Testifying through a Thai interpreter, Chowsanitphon said he was sentenced to six months of house arrest and five years of probation but no jail time. He also said he paid the 44 workers $48,000.
The witness was to return for the afternoon session, but before he was called, French’s health matter was brought up in private bench conference with the judge and attorneys.
In asking for the recess until Friday, Susan Cushman, an assistant U.S. attorney based in Hawaii, said the case is being handled by the Justice Department’s civil rights section in Washington.
"I am no expert in human trafficking law," she said.
Cushman said she asked for help because French wasn’t feeling well and because of the issues raised in the morning about the grand jury.
The nature of French’s health condition was not disclosed.
