A jury of eight men and four women who heard 20 days of testimony through more than a month will listen to closing arguments today before deliberating the fate of State Department special agent Christopher Deedy in the death of a Kailua man.
The panel must decide whether the Virginia resident should be found guilty of murdering Kollin Elderts at a McDonald’s in Waikiki or acquitted because he fired his gun in self-defense.
He is charged with murdering Elderts, 23, when he fired three shots from his 9 mm Glock handgun at about 2:45 a.m. Nov. 5, 2011.
Deedy, 29, of Arlington, was in town to provide security at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference and the shooting occurred just before the start of the gathering.
He is free on $250,000 bond and had been allowed to return home to work at a desk job at the State Department.
The jury does not have the option of returning a conviction on a lesser offense of manslaughter.
The panel repeatedly watched images from a surveillance video of the shooting scene at the Kuhio Avenue restaurant.
Both the prosecution and defense highlighted for witnesses video frames the lawyers believed helped their cases. Despite the video images, witnesses often provided conflicting testimony about what happened before and during the shooting.
The prosecution’s case is that a drunken and inexperienced Deedy, an agent for less than two years, armed himself while drinking at Chinatown and Waikiki bars before ending up at McDonald’s and shooting Elderts, who was unarmed.
Deedy could have walked away, but instead instigated the deadly altercation by kicking Elderts, according to prosecutors.
The defense contends that Deedy wasn’t intoxicated and, when Elderts attacked him, fired in self-defense based on his training as a law enforcement officer. Deedy testified he thought Elderts had been bullying a customer.
Deedy said he knew firing his gun could kill Elderts, but said Elderts was straddling him and punching him when the fatal shot was fired.
On Tuesday, Circuit Judge Karen Ahn said she was not instructing the jurors that they could consider a manslaughter verdict. She noted that neither the defense nor prosecution had asked for that instruction.
The judge also said she didn’t think there was evidence to support the charge that Deedy “recklessly” killed Elderts.
Jack Tonaki, state Public Defender whose office is not involved in the case, said manslaughter is usually an option in murder cases.
“It’s an extreme gamble in most cases just to have the jury instructed on murder,” he said. “Attorneys usually want an area where the jury could compromise on the lesser verdict.”
Franklin Don Pacarro, a former city deputy prosecutor, said in his experience, “almost always when you have a self-defense case in a murder trial, manslaughter is given.”
“To me, she has a lot of guts,” he said of city Deputy Prosecutor Janice Futa, the lead prosecutor in the trial.
Deedy’s attorney, Brook Hart, declined to say why the defense did not ask for the manslaughter option.
The murder charge against Deedy carries a mandatory life term with possibility of parole. But even with a manslaughter conviction, he would still automatically get a prison term of up to 20 years.
Under state law, he would not be eligible for probation and a manslaughter conviction would most likely end his job with the State Department.
In not asking for manslaughter, the prosecution is signaling that it believes it has a strong enough case to persuade the jurors to return the murder conviction.
City Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro said Wednesday his office “agrees with Judge Ahn” in her ruling that manslaughter is not an option.
Tonaki noted that under state law, the prosecution must negate beyond a reasonable doubt that Deedy fired in self-defense.
If there’s reasonable doubt, he said, the jury must find Deedy not guilty.
