On Sunday, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald broke a story about a law group’s efforts to exonerate a co-defendant in one of Hawaii’s most notorious murders.
On Monday, a key witness in that effort was dead.
A lawyer for the Hawaii Innocence Project on Tuesday called the timing “an extraordinary coincidence.”
Brook Hart, a prominent Honolulu defense attorney and HIP volunteer lawyer, said it’s “premature to predict with any certainty” the impact the death Monday of Frank Pauline Jr. in a New Mexico prison will have on the case of Hart’s client, Albert “Ian” Schweitzer.
Schweitzer is serving a life sentence with a minimum of 130 years in an Arizona prison for the abduction, rape and murder of Dana Ireland, 23, on Christmas Eve 1991 in lower Puna.
Pauline was serving a life sentence with 180-year minimum when he was found dead Monday, on his 42nd birthday, in the recreation yard of Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility.
Pauline’s 1994 confession, later recanted, implicated Schweitzer and Schweitzer’s younger brother, Shawn.
“I don’t know what the circumstances were at the New Mexico prison, but it’s an extraordinary coincidence that, within one day of the publication of the article, a key witness was dead,” Hart said Tuesday.
Shawn Schweitzer, who was 16 when the crime occurred, made a plea deal and was sentenced to five years probation and a year in jail, already served, for manslaughter. The younger Schweitzer spoke at his own sentencing, but did not testify at Pauline’s or his brother’s trials.
Pauline later said he fabricated his confession to help his half-brother, John Gonsalves, receive a lighter sentence on a drug charge.
A statement from the New Mexico Corrections Department gave no details about how Pauline died, other than to say CPR was performed, but contained the line: “No suspects have been named at this time.”
Gonsalves reportedly told a Honolulu newspaper he received a call from a New Mexico prison official telling him Pauline was struck by a rock in the back of the head during a fight in the prison yard.
The Hawaii Tribune-Herald attempted to contact Gonsalves, unsuccessfully, for this story.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
