Prosecutor: Stiffer penalties justified

The Puna District’s current state of emergency has given police and prosecutors another tool to deal with certain crimes, and they’ve demonstrated a willingness to use it.

Enhanced criminal penalties made available under Act 111, which was signed into law earlier this year by Gov. Neil Abercrombie, has been applied in two recent burglary cases.

Ronald Altura Jr., a 23-year-old Keaau man, became the second individual charged with a burglary that, upon conviction, carries a double penalty — in his case, 20 years for a Class A felony.

Altura, who allegedly burglarized an Orchidland Estates home Sept. 8, is in custody on $10,000 bail awaiting a preliminary hearing at 2 p.m. Oct. 2 in Hilo District Court.

The defendant in the first case, 22-year-old Clinton Ronald Souza, is set to face trial Dec. 15 for allegedly burglarizing the Alii Ice factory on Banyan Drive in Hilo either late Aug. 12 or early Aug. 13. He faces a possible 10-year term for the business break-in, which normally would be a Class C felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment.

Until Oct. 17, the Big Island is still under the state of emergency declared by Gov. Neil Abercrombie because of Tropical Storm Iselle, which devastated portions of Puna and Ka‘u on Aug. 7. In addition, Mayor Billy Kenoi proclaimed a separate state of emergency for the Puna District because of the threat to Pahoa and surrounding subdivisions from Kilauea volcano’s June 27 lava flow.

Iselle occurred more than six weeks ago, and Orchidland is several miles away from the lava flow and apparently not in the projected path, but police Capt. Robert Wagner of the Criminal Investigation Division said the emergency proclamation allows police and prosecutors to file more serious charges when appropriate.

“I didn’t create the proclamation,” Wagner said Tuesday. “The law says we can charge them (with the enhanced possible penalties). If it’s a felony, we present it to the prosecutors and they make that decision.

“There are a lot of people in the Puna area in disarray right now, not just Pahoa or Hawaiian Beaches or Hawaiian Shores. You’ve got Nanawale people worrying; you’ve got (Hawaiian) Paradise Park people worrying. I don’t know if Ainaloa or Orchidland are threatened, but it wasn’t all that long ago there was a lava flow and people thought Ainaloa was in the path (in 2007).”

County Prosecutor Mitch Roth said enhanced charges are justified because people are “still suffering from Iselle and still trying to recover from Iselle.”

“Law enforcement in the Puna District, they’re covering the whole area, but their resources have been siphoned off due to the emergency where they’re being pulled to different locations,” Roth said.

Other offenses that could result in heftier charges because of the emergency proclamation include: robbery, which could result in a Class A felony whether a weapon is used or not; theft of between $300 and $20,000, usually a Class C felony, which could be charged as first-degree theft, a Class B felony; and criminal property damage — which, no matter how minor, could result in a possible 10-year prison term.

“What is interesting about it is it doesn’t give a dollar amount, so any criminal property damage that is committed during an emergency would jump up to a Class B felony,” Roth said.

Roth said the current state of affairs in Puna justifies the seeking of extended prison terms in certain cases.

“If people are going to take advantage of other people when they’re suffering or they can’t be at their place because they have to take care of something else, then we should be prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law,” he said.

Pahoa businessman Brady Metcalf, who said his fiancée’s home was burglarized, is doubtful longer sentences will deter burglary or even possible widespread looting should the lava cross Highway 130, isolating lower Puna.

“There are people, who, like it or not, when I go to work or when my fiancée goes to work in her restaurant, they wait for you to go out, and they go to work on your house. That’s their job,” he said. “You can put the signs up and tell them there’s gonna be enhanced penalties or whatever. I don’t think they’re gonna take heed because this is what they do for a living.”

Metcalf said if people are isolated long enough by the lava, a burglar, or even an emergency worker who can’t be readily identified, could end up being shot by a fearful homeowner or resident.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said. “It makes me nervous because it’s going to be a field day for them. If hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people, leave their homes, they have free pickin’. And when people are nervous and edgy, and they’ve been on alert for months waiting for the lava to get here, they may … do things they normally wouldn’t do. That’s human nature.”

Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.