Keith Shigatomi
Appearances
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
ian is convicted even faster than frank and you know that obviously the the family's devastated that ian has been convicted he's going to be serving a life sentence unless something changes at some point in the future that's his fate he's got a life sentence Now, at that point, Sean is in his early 20s. He has two young children.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
The thought of him going to prison has got to be a scary thought, especially for something that we didn't do. And my position throughout the entire case was always, you know, Sean, I believe in you. I believe in me. I think we can win this. I don't give a shit what happened to Frank. I don't give a shit what happened to Ian. You want to fight? We'll go down.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
We'll go down that alley together and we'll give them the fight of their life. And, you know, Sean's appreciative. And I said, but at the same time, if you want to not go to prison, you tell me and I'll see what I can do. And that's when, you know, the decision is made, OK, well, let's see what we can try to do to prevent Sean from going to prison.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
They administer the exam to Sean. So I'm there. Guillermo is there. But Guillermo's off the side. He's doing whatever he's doing or whatever. And the examiner comes out to me and goes, hey, Keith, Your boy is testing hot. I go, what do you mean? He's failing. You're not passing. So I go to Guillermo and I ask, hey, will you accept inconclusive? And Guillermo goes, yeah, I accept that.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
So I said, OK, great. He never passed the polygraph and I've never said pass the polygraph. And I don't bring it to anybody's attention because, you know, they're saying that they're willing to go forward with it.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Typically what happens is when you go to court and you plead guilty, the court just wants to make sure you know what you're doing and says, you know, are you pleading in fact guilty because you were in fact guilty? Yeah. And they just get through it and take the plea and it's over.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
But I think in this case, the judge wanted to be pretty thorough and was asking all about these statements that are in the plea agreement as well as the plea agreement. And I believe she's getting somewhat frustrated because Sean's not going to tell him, I did this, I did that, I'm guilty. You know, it was hard enough to try to get in there and fashion a plea that we could accept.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
And so I know the judge is getting frustrated and that's when I think Rick and Ashita stepped up and said, oh, Judge, you know, kind of like, don't worry about it. He's admitted to it. He made a statement to us. He passed the polygraph. And I think at that point, Judge Amato kind of like, okay, let's just get this thing over with and picks the plea.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Now, the other thing is, is that if you look at the plea agreement, I think he, Sean, pled to mass slaughter and kidnapping. But if you look at it closely, it says by omission and that I failed to take action to prevent all this from happening. He didn't say I did anything wrong. He just says I didn't do anything. And my position has always been that there is no such charge as
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
manslaughter by omission or kidnapping by omission. That's a bogus charge. You can't plead guilty to something that's not a charge. And so that's another basis that has been raised to allow Sean to withdraw the pleas because he pled to something that doesn't exist. You can't convict someone for a crime that doesn't exist. So that was kind of like the escape valve that I'd left in there.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
You know, people talk about the defense, the defendant being presumed innocent. That doesn't change unless and until the prosecution can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But in reality, people think that if you're arrested, you're guilty.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
And so we deal with that in every case, regardless of if it's on the front page news or it's something that nobody has ever heard of before and nobody really gives a shit about. So that's just the reality.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
I mean, the public was in outrage at that point because without notice, here they are dismissing the case and everyone's saying, hey, these inept prosecutors or police are screwing up again. And so, you know, that was a sacrifice that, or concession that, that we're willing to make because, you know, we were under the impression that they're not going to try this case again. The DNA doesn't match.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Now, in Frank's situation, you know, a little different story because Frank says, I did this, I did that. And so you want to try Frank? Go ahead. But Ian and Sean?
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
So what happened is when they first brought the indictment, the court appointed a set of lawyers to represent Ian, Sean, and Frank Pauline.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
The court went through great lengths to make sure that the attorneys that were appointed were quality attorneys and that the courts could trust that they were going to provide good, well, not good, I mean, superior representation to the three of them. Then what happened was
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Once the attorneys were selected and were representing Frank, Ian and Sean, the prosecutor started saying, well, you know, we want to disqualify some of these attorneys. So I think they moved to disqualify Frank's lawyer, who was well regarded. And then they disqualified Sean's lawyer, who was highly regarded. And, you know, I was a lawyer in private practice in Honolulu.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
I had been practicing criminal defense A number of years, I had a lot of high profile cases and the court called me and asked me if I would consider. But, you know, typically when the court appoints someone, they simply will call the attorney, ask the attorney, hey, are you available? Will you accept the case? But in Sean's case, before that even happened, the court called and
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Well, the staff called and said the judge would like to interview you and talk to you before she makes a decision on who she's actually going to appoint. It's always better to have good lawyers involved because there's less mistakes made and finding money in the future. So, I mean, that's kind of how that went. And the court called me in Honolulu and asked me to represent Sean.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
And so, you know, that's the kind of steps that were taken in this case, which typically doesn't happen because, you know, the court saw the significance and magnitude of the case.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
And so we're talking to them and I asked them, well, what are you guys going to do about this DNA result? And they said,
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
you know there's all this mind games going on it's like nothing i said what do you mean nothing and so i told prosecutor well i guess then you won't mind that uh i sent in a motion to dismiss and we have the dna result attached to it and all of a sudden prosecutor starts swearing you know what the did you do that for you know what the you know it's like well
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
what's the problem i mean that's what i'm doing i'm finding a motion to dismiss and it's like uh but just calm down you know i said i'm willing to call the court and say hey don't file this motion because they're obviously at that point nobody there's no public knowledge of it and so now all of a sudden everybody's going to find out that the dna doesn't match
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
And so I said, but, you know, if you're willing to give me something for it, I'll call the court and say, don't file the motion, just hold on to it. What do you want? I want the case dismissed.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
And a couple of days later, they came back and they said, OK, we'll dismiss. And so that added another tremendous twist to the case because we go to court, nobody's expecting it. And all of a sudden, the state files this notice of dismissal. And now the public's even more like, what the heck is going on in this case?
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
What normally happens is... on these what they call rule 40s is the court grants the rule 40 in other words finds that um unfairness has occurred the court will then vacate the conviction set it aside set the matter for trial well judge kubota went farther than that and dismissed the case and so now
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
The California Innocence Project filed a petition on behalf of Sean saying that the conviction was unlawful, that he should be entitled to the same relief as Ian. There's a little wrinkle that it can be treated, it may be treated somewhat differently because they're both saying this new evidence confirms that they had nothing to do with it.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
the extensive DNA testing, the tire tracks, the bite mark has been shown to be not reliable. So under the doctrine of collateral estoppel, collateral estoppel says that if the issue's been decided after a full hearing, and the parties involved are similar or related, then we're not going to force another hearing because that's, you know, it's already been decided.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
So with that, if the court has heard the evidence from Ian's hearing and finding that the issues and the parties are similar, the court can grant the same relief. Alternatively, because Sean entered a plea, it's also a way in which the court can order that his plea be withdrawn and the matter be reset for trial or dismissed at that point.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
But because Sean entered a plea, it's a little bit different. And so we either have to withdraw it or the court can say it doesn't matter because of the new evidence. But we have these alternative positions that are there.