Hawai'i Legal News

  State v. Campbell (ICA September 19, 2024) Background. Corey Campbell was charged with assaulting a police officer in the first degree and two petty misdemeanors while she was on vacation from Massachusetts. She was arrested and detained because she could not afford to bail out. The court let her out on conditions of release and allowed her to “fly back home to Massachusetts and live in Massachusetts.” She went home. She made eleven appearances in court by zoom. Trial was not set for more than a year after the charges were brought.   In advance of her trial date, her court-appointed counsel (the public defender withdrew based on irreconcilable differences), filed a motion for the court to pay the expenses of returning to Hawai'i to attend her trial. The requested costs included airfare, lodging, and transportation. The court—with the Honorable Judge Kirstin M. Hamman—granted the motion and approved the order. Weeks later, it rescinded the order on the grounds that it ...

  State v. Pulgados (ICA October 30, 2020) Background. Desmond Pulgados was prosecuted for property and drug offenses in six separate cases. He and the prosecution reached a plea agreement in which Pulagdos would plead no contest to sixteen offenses and the parties agreed to recommend probation. The circuit court—the Hon. Judge Rhonda I. L. Loo presiding—sentenced Pulgados to prison for ten years instead, imposed restitution in the amount of $906.99, fined him $500, and two imposed fees: the crime victim compensation fee in the total amount of $1,575 and the internet crimes against children at $1,500.   Pulgados moved to waive the fees on the grounds that he could not afford to pay them. Pulgados argued there was a “presumption of indigency” based on his qualification for representation by the Office of the Public Defender and that presumption had not been rebutted at sentencing. At the hearing on the motion, Pulgados testified that he had no income, savings, checking a...

State v. Anzalone (HSC February 14, 2018) Background. Dawn Anazalone was charged with custodial interference in the first degree. She was arrested in Florida and extradited back to Hawaii pursuant to an arrest warrant issued by the family court. She did not challenge the extradition. She pleaded no contest pursuant to a plea agreement with the prosecution. At sentencing, Anzalone moved to defer acceptance of her no-contest plea. The prosecution requested the Court to order that she pay the $4,581.93 in costs and expenses for extraditing her. Over Anzalone’s objection the family court denied the motion for deferral and ordered she pay the total costs in extradition as restitution to the State, ordered payment in the amount of $50 per month as a condition of her probation, and issued repayment as a free-standing order. Anzalone appealed. The ICA concluded that the family court erred in considering the extradition cost as restitution, but concluded that it could be imposed as a condi...