2 Hawaiian men guilty of hate crime in white man's beating
A jury has found two Native Hawaiian men guilty of a hate crime for the 2014 beating of a white man
HONOLULU (AP) — A jury on Thursday found two Native Hawaiian men guilty of a hate crime for the 2014 beating of a white man who was fixing up a house he purchased in their remote Maui neighborhood.
In an unusual move, the U.S. Department of Justice sought to prosecute Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi and Levi Aki Jr. and secured a federal grand jury indictment in December 2020 charging each with a hate crime count punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Prosecuters alleged during the trial in U.S. District Court in Honolulu that Alo-Kaonohi and Aki were motivated by Christopher Kunzelman’s race when they punched, kicked and used a shovel to beat him in Kahakuloa village. Kunzelman was left with injuries including a concussion, two broken ribs and head and abdominal trauma, prosecutors said.
Alo-Kaonohi previously pleaded no contest to felony assault in state court and was sentenced to probation, while Aki pleaded no contest to terroristic threatening and was sentenced to probation and nearly 200 days in jail. The federal trial was held separately, to determine if they were guilty of a hate crime. It’s unclear why it took so long for U.S. prosecutors to pursue hate crime charges.
