CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Katherine and Louis Kealoha arrives at federal court on June 25, 2019.
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The Hawaii Supreme Court has reversed a Honolulu Police Commission decision that said Louis Kealoha was entitled to taxpayer-funded representation while on trial for the scandal he was involved in as chief for the Honolulu Police Department.
The high court issued its opinion today , disagreeing with the commission’s argument that Kealoha’s actions during the scandal entitled him to an attorney paid by the City and County of Honolulu “because they were done in the performance of Kealoha’s duty as a police officer, even if unlawful and regardless of motive.”
But the court later said that, according to that logic, “police officers who effectuate arrests without probable cause for personal, non-law-enforcement-related vendettas, or who fabricate and submit false police reports for personal purposes, would be entitled to representation because arrests and preparation of police reports are ‘acts that police officers generally perform.’”
The former chief and his wife, former city Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha, were sentenced in 2020 following one of Hawaii’s biggest public corruption scandals in which the couple conspired to steal the proceeds from a reverse mortgage on a home belonging to Katherine’s grandmother.
Kealoha had asked the city to provide him with a defense attorney, which the police commission in 2019 granted despite a recommendation from the city’s Department of the Corporation Counsel to deny the request.
The commission’s decision was reaffirmed in 2020 in a Circuit Court decision and again last March in a decision by the Intermediate Court of Appeals.
The city said it was “pleased” with the high court’s decision.
“The City understands that former Chief Kealoha was represented by court-appointed attorneys in the federal criminal case so the City has not paid for his criminal defense,” the Department of the Corporation Counsel said in a statement. “The City will continue to seek recovery of the payment to former Chief Kealoha and continues to search for any assets to which the default judgment may be attached.”