A state appeals court says a lower court judge should have found in favor of the Hawaii Attorney General in its effort to collect nearly $1 million in unpaid fines, costs and interest from convicted Ewa Villages thief Michael Kahapea.

Friday’s opinion by the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals overturns Circuit Judge Keith Hiraoka’s 2017 rulings against the Attorney General in favor of Kahapea.

The Attorney General filed a civil lawsuit in 2016 against Kahapea and the state Employees’ Retirement System seeking to garnish Kahapea’s state pension.

State law does not allow for the garnishment of state retirement benefits to collect fines imposed in a criminal case.

In ruling against the state, the ICA said Hiraoka discounted other means for the state to collect the fines. The appeals court also said Hiraoka should have granted the Attorney General’s request to amend its lawsuit to seek conversion of the criminal fines into a civil judgment.

A state jury found Kahapea, a former city Housing Department employee, guilty in 200o of multiple counts of theft, forgery, unlawful ownership of a business, money laundering, tax evasion and bribery in connection with the diversion of $5.8 million from the Ewa Villages relocation fund.

Then-Circuit Judge Rey Graulty sentenced Kahapea to five consecutive 10-year prison terms and fined him $365,000. He did not order Kahapea to pay restitution because state sentencing law at the time restricted the amount judges could order in restitution to what the defendant could afford to pay. State lawmakers have since changed the law, allowing judges to order restitution regardless of a defendant’s ability to pay.

Kahapea won early release on parole in 2015 and started collecting a state pension for his years of work for the city, including the years he stole millions from the Ewa Villages relocation fund.

When the state filed its lawsuit, the Attorney General said Kahapea had paid just $50 of the $365,000 in fines. When it asked Hiraoka to rule in its favor in February 2017, the Attorney General said with costs and interest added, Kahapea owed $955,442.

Kahapea’s lawyer Richard Naiwieha Wurdeman says the state is going after someone who is 76 years old, has no assets and has a nominal pension. He believes the fines were illegally imposed and that Kahapea is considering appealing the ICA’s opinion to the Hawaii Supreme Court or seeking other remedies when the case goes back to Hiraoka.