Two Honolulu police officers on July 19 will try to convince the Police Commission that city taxpayers should pay their legal fees in a high-profile civil case against them.

Whether those proceedings will be open to the public remains unresolved.

The commission voted 4-1 Wednesday to make the hearings public — unless either or both of the officers decides to waive the right to a public hearing and instead have their arguments made behind closed doors in a secret executive session.

The vote was taken after a city attorney gave the advice, during a closed session, to keep the meetings public unless the officers ask they not be.

But what happens if officers want to keep the proceedings closed while the media and others in the public want them open is unclear.

Commissioners Loretta Sheehan and Steven Levinson want to explore the issue further before the proceedings begin.

Sheehan, the lone “no” vote, first questioned if contested case proceedings on officers’ request for legal fees should be private, as they generally have been over the years, along with a host of other discussions involving city attorneys.

While she agrees with colleagues that an officer can waive due process rights, “I don’t know if he can use due process to bar access,” Sheehan said. “The officer cannot waive a right that he or she doesn’t have.”

Levinson, while voting with the majority, said he wants to more closely review opinions made by two U.S. appeals courts that apparently suggest that the First Amendment rights of the public take precedence over that of a requestor. “Apparently, there is federal case law on that point,” he said.

Levinson said Wednesday’s vote that the hearings should be public was important. If a closer study of the opinions show that’s the case, Levinson said he may join Sheehan’s position that the hearings should remain open even if the officers prefer them closed.

The issue of whether the hearings should be public will be decided July 19, just before the hearings themselves take place.

Commission Chairman Max Sword said he is inclined to follow the advice of Deputy Corporation Counsel Krishna Jayaram that the hearing should be public unless the officers waive that right.

Officers Ming-Hung “Bobby” Nguyen and Daniel Sellers argue the city should pay their attorneys’ fees in the case Puana vs. Kealoha after the Department of Corporation Counsel recommended against the payments.

The lawsuit was brought by Gerard Puana, who alleges retired Chief Louis Kealoha and his wife Katherine, Puana’s niece, conspired with officers including Nguyen and Sellers to frame Puana in the theft of the Kealohas’ mailbox. Puana said he was wrongly arrested, imprisoned and prosecuted to help the Kealohas gain an advantage over him in a family legal dispute.

Nguyen and Sellers argue that they are entitled to legal representation by the Council because they were acting within their duties as police officers.

The Corporation Counsel’s office recommended that the requests of Nguyen and Sellers be denied but recommended that HPD Detective Dru Akagi receive up to $50,000 for city-paid legal counsel, which was approved by the commission and then the Honolulu City Council.

The Corporation Counsel also recommended that Louis Kealoha’s request for legal representation be rejected. But the retired chief’s contested case hearing has yet to be placed on the Police Commission’s agenda because Kealoha wants Sheehan disqualified from voting on his request. The commission voted to seek an opinion on Sheehan’s participation from the city Ethics Commission, which has yet to issue a ruling.

The Puana lawsuit is closely related to the federal conspiracy investigation, which centers around the theft of the Kealohas’ mailbox.

The case against Puana was dismissed in December 2014, shortly after the chief, while on the witness stand, made an inadmissible statement about Puana’s criminal history.

The federal public defender representing Puana in that case turned over his information to the FBI, which triggered federal Grand Jury proceedings that have now run for more than a year.

In December, former HPD Officer Niall Silva pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiring with others in the mailbox case to alter evidence and falsify records, obstructing a federal prosecution and making false statements against Puana.