The Hawaii Supreme Courtroom reversed the July 1, 2024, Intermediate Courtroom of Appeals’ determination and upheld an Oahu Circuit Courtroom’s July 20, 2022, conviction of Erik Willis for second-degree tried homicide within the 2020 stabbing of a 17-year-old lady sunbathing at Kahala Seashore.
The excessive court docket’s unanimous opinion Tuesday rejected Willis’s declare of prosecutorial misconduct. Feedback by the deputy prosecuting lawyer throughout closing arguments “didn’t rise to the extent of prosecutorial misconduct,” the court docket stated.
The appeals court docket had despatched the case again to the decrease court docket for an additional trial.
“The (deputy prosecuting lawyer’s) challenged feedback, seen in context, have been primarily based upon cheap inferences from the proof adduced at trial,” the opinion says, including “there isn’t a cheap risk that these feedback … alone may need affected the trial’s final result.”
Tuesday’s opinion, penned by Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald and signed by the 4 affiliate justices, explains the factual background in an effort to give context to the closing arguments in query.
The teenage lady had been sunbathing on Kahala Seashore about 1:30 p.m. July 8, 2020, when an unknown particular person pinned her down from behind, lined her mouth and repeatedly stabbed her within the neck as she lay on her abdomen. She suffered life- threatening accidents, however survived.
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The Circuit Courtroom granted Willis’s movement to suppress proof, together with DNA obtained from blood stains on Willis’s proper shoe that prosecutor’s stated matched the DNA of the lady, in addition to statements obtained on the time of his arrest. The choice was primarily based on the truth that Honolulu Police Division officers with out permission or a search warrant had entered the Niu Valley dwelling the place Willis was dwelling.
The Supreme Courtroom upheld that call when the state appealed the matter, so jurors by no means discovered throughout trial concerning the precise blood proof. The state needed to depend on witness testimony and circumstantial proof at trial.
The state offered a number of witnesses together with surveillance video tying Willis to the scene and alongside the path to and from his home.
Willis had been recognized, primarily based on surveillance video from a metropolis bus, by a landscaper who testified a person in surveillance video was the identical one he had seen washing himself off at a sink close to the scene of the assault earlier than operating off. However the landscaper didn’t point out blood.
The teenage sufferer testified she arrived on the seaside at about 1:20 p.m., and that she noticed a person stroll towards her, then stroll previous her. She described him as having “brown, poofy hair,” sporting a white T-shirt, light-colored denims and a blue surgical masks. She stated she seen his eyes and his “bushy eyebrows.”
Later as she lay on her abdomen on the seaside, she stated she felt a hand cowl her mouth and a weight on her again earlier than feeling sharp stabbing in her neck. She stated she counted that she was stabbed 15 occasions. When she was capable of transfer, she stated she turned to look within the Ewa path and noticed the person operating away.
She recognized her attacker in surveillance video taken from 4671 Kahala Avenue close by; and she or he recognized Willis within the courtroom.
The protection offered no proof, no witnesses and Willis declined to testify.
Deputy Prosecutor Lawrence Sousie targeted on the brutal assault throughout closing arguments. He then recounted the testimony and the video surveillance, piecing collectively the state’s timeline that Willis took the bus from his Niu Valley dwelling to Kahala Seashore, the place he attacked {the teenager}, went to a close-by sink to scrub up, tried to scrub the blood out of his white shirt and disappeared for 2 hours, hiding and ready.
He stated a witness had testified she noticed a person stand up from {the teenager}’s again, and she or he seen one thing on his white shirt.
“What might or not it’s?” Sousie says. “Blood? There was loads of blood. … We don’t know.”
Two motions for acquittal by Willis’s lawyer, Eric Seitz, have been denied.
Seitz argued in his closing there was no direct proof, no witness who noticed the assault, no weapon recovered, and no suspect was discovered after HPD searched the realm. No witness had recognized the particular person within the video that reveals somebody washing his arms on the sink.
Seitz accused Sousie of prosecutorial misconduct for saying in his closing: “So we don’t know whether or not he washed the shirt on the sink, however we all know from (the landscaper) that he washed his arms and his face … as a result of he had blood on them.”
The state argued and the Supreme Courtroom agreed after listening to the audiotape that the numerous pause that comes earlier than the phrase “as a result of he had blood on them,” was a sign to the jury the deputy prosecutor was arguing an inference relating to the presence of blood.
The state additionally argued the deputy prosecutor was merely drawing an inexpensive inference primarily based on the circumstantial proof at trial, and that it could be implausible that the jury would have believed the landscaper testified the person had blood on his face and arms simply because the deputy prosecutor stated it.
Seitz stated HPD didn’t seize or analyze the sink, nor join it to Willis, and the deputy prosecutor mustn’t have “rhetorically requested the jury to take a position concerning the particular person on the sink and the presence of blood.”
The Supreme Courtroom stated prosecutors are forbidden from introducing new proof in closing arguments, however usually are not prohibited from crafting arguments primarily based on the proof within the report, and are afforded vast latitude in closing, and should talk about and remark and draw cheap inferences from the proof.
Correction: >> An earlier model of this story misspelled Deputy Prosecutor Lawrence Sousie’s first title.
