A Waimea man currently serving time for attacking a Waikoloa man with a knife is suing the county and two police officers in federal court for arresting him on charges he kidnapped, tortured and raped a Puna woman while he was allegedly wearing a pretrial ankle monitor he claims demonstrated his innocence.
John H. White, currently serving a 10-year sentence in the Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona, wants a jury to decide monetary and punitive damages and attorney’s fees in the case against Hawaii County and Hawaii Police officers Kuilee Dela Cruz and Levon Stevens. In addition to federal civil rights charges, White is alleging state charges including unlawful arrest and negligent training and supervision.
Chief United States District Judge J. Michael Seabright on Oct. 1 dismissed a number of the state charges against all but Stevens in his personal capacity, rather than official capacity, because the charges weren’t timely filed.
Two of the three federal civil rights charges — the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and the 14th Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection — remain against all three defendants.
The county Corporation Counsel is set to discuss the case with the County Council in executive session Jan. 5, after a Dec. 7 settlement conference arrived at no settlement.
A jury trial is scheduled for June 21 before Seabright.
The civil case stems from an incident that allegedly took place throughout several days during the last week of May, 2019, in Hawaiian Paradise Park. The victim, a then 36-year-old woman, was treated at Hilo Medical Center for multiple injuries. She told police she was kidnapped, held at the house at gunpoint, beaten and sexually assaulted.
White, then 40, was free on $100,000 bail at the time in the Waikoloa stabbing case. In the lawsuit, he claims he was also wearing an ankle monitor that alerted authorities and created location records if he strayed farther than 30 feet from his Waimea home.
“Defendants … knew and/or should have known that Plaintiff was wearing an ankle monitor that monitored his location and the data therefrom showed that he was not in Puna at the time of the alleged crimes,” White’s Honolulu attorney Jacob Delaplane said in a June 5, 2021 complaint.
“Despite having this knowledge of Plaintiff’s innocence in the alleged kidnapping, torture, and rape of (the Puna woman), Defendants caused him to be arrested unlawfully and/or caused the extended deprivation of his liberty by jailing him for approximately 6 days for gruesome crimes he did not commit,” the complaint states. “Defendants further perpetrated this harm by filing false and misleading declarations with the court, omitting clearly exculpatory facts that would have negated a probable cause finding.”
In September of that year, White was convicted of first-degree assault in the Waikoloa case and sentenced to 10 years incarceration. According to testimony, the victim was stabbed five times in the back and received a cut to his throat.
In a June 30, 2021 response to the civil complaint, Deputy Corporation Counsel Steven Idemoto, attorney for the county and the police officers, said the defendants exercised reasonable care in police practices and procedures. Their actions were reasonable and “not wrongful or shocking,” the county response states.
“Plaintiff has not suffered emotional distress, severe or otherwise,” Idemoto said in the court filing. “If Plaintiff sustained injuries or damages as alleged in the Complaint, such injuries and damages were the result of Plaintiff’s own wrongful, intentional, reckless and/or malicious misconduct.”
