CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Jury selection was discussed Friday for the trial of former Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha and his wife, Katherine Kealoha, shown walking toward Federal Court on Tuesday.
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More than 430 people will be considered to sit as jurors in the conspiracy and obstruction trial of retired Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha; his wife, former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha; and three former members of the Honolulu Police Department’s elite Criminal Intelligence Unit.
Jury selection and other logistical issues were discussed Friday at a pretrial hearing in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge
J. Michael Seabright.
Jury selection is scheduled to start May 13 with potential jurors expected to show up at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center for screening.
The court sent juror questionnaires to 1,500 people statewide, of which 433 said they were available to serve as a juror, Seabright said.
Seabright told the attorneys on both sides of the high-profile case Friday that jury selection will not be about finding people unfamiliar with the case.
“It’s about jurors who can be fair and impartial,” he said.
The Kealohas and the accused officers — Derek Wayne Hahn, Minh-Hung “Bobby” Nguyen and Gordon Shiraishi — will stand trial on charges they schemed to stage a mailbox theft and frame a Kealoha relative for it, then lied about it to investigators.