A native Hawaiian man could be facing extra time in prison over a 2014 attack on a white man after an appeals court ruled his sentence should be increased because the incident was a hate crime.
In 2023, Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi and Levi Aki Jr. were convicted of attacking Christopher Kunzelman in 2014 when he tried to buy a home in the Maui village where Alo-Kaonohi and Aki lived, according to the Associated Press.
Alo-Kaonohi was sentenced to 78 months behind bars while Aki was sentenced to 50 months in prison, according to a news release from the Department of Justice at the time of the original 2023 sentencing.
Although the jury at the time said race was the motivating factor behind the attack, the judge in the case did not apply extra time for a hate crime when Alo-Kaonohi was sentenced, the AP report said.
Alo-Kaonohi appealed his sentence, while prosecutors cross-appealed.
A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel affirmed the conviction and ruled that the extra time for a hate crime should be added to Alo-Kaonohi’s sentence.
Sentencing guidelines mean that could put Alo-Kaonohi behind bars for another three years, Alexander Silvert, a retired federal defender who was not part of the case, said.
Lori Kunzelman, the wife of the victim, said the property cannot be sold.
“The families there won’t allow anybody to step foot on that property,” she said. “There’s so much animosity.”
Is it right that this is being considered a hate crime?
Lori Kunzelman told the New York Post that he suffered severe brain damage.
“We had vacationed on Maui year after year — loved, loved, loved Maui,” she said, leading them to buy an oceanfront house for $175,000.
“It was obviously a hate crime from the very beginning. The whole time they’re saying things like, ‘You have the wrong skin color. No ‘haole’ is ever going to live in our neighborhood,’” she said after the 2023 trial.
Haole is a Hawaiian word used to mean “foreigner” or “white person.”
According to the Justice Department release, after the victim bought the house as a place to live with his wife and their three daughters, “he was harassed and threatened by various Kahakuloa residents who told him things like, ‘This is a Hawaiian village. The only thing coming from the outside is the electricity,’ and ‘You don’t even belong in Hawaii.’”
The release said that on the night of the 2014 attack, local residents “stormed onto his property and demanded that he pack his things and leave, threatening to ‘tie [him] up and drag [him]’ and make him ‘go missing’ if he did not comply,” the release said.
“When C.K. replied that he owned the house, Alo-Kaonohi dragged his index finger along C.K.’s jaw and told him, ‘Your skin is the wrong f***ing color,’” the release said.
“Aki then picked up a roofing shovel and handed it to Alo-Kaonohi, who struck C.K. in the head with it, opening up a bloody wound on the back of C.K.’s head. Later on, after C.K. had already begun packing up his possessions, the defendants attacked him a second time. During that attack, Aki head butted C.K. and struck him in the face with the shovel a second time, giving C.K. a concussion and causing him to lose consciousness,” the release added.
“When he came to, the defendants were kicking him in the side and broke two of his ribs. During the second attack, one of the defendants said, ‘no white man is ever going to live here,’” the release continued.
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