High court weighs in on Schweitzers’ case

The Hawaii Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Hilo Circuit Judge Peter Kubota to transfer a petition seeking monetary compensation for brothers Albert “Ian” Schweitzer and Shawn Schweitzer to a new civil case.

Kubota last year vacated the convictions of both brothers in the Christmas Eve 1991 abduction, rape and murder of Dana Ireland in lower Puna.

The high court also ordered the judge to quash a subpoena ordering the Hawaii Police Department to release information regarding Albert Lauro Jr. — implicated by DNA as the previously Unidentified Male No. 1 — to the Schweitzers.

HPD asked the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus, a rarely granted order from the high court instructing a lower court or government department or official to take a certain action.

In granting the writ, the high court said Kubota erred by ordering HPD to turn over documents regarding its ongoing investigation of Lauro, a 57-year-old Puna man who killed himself four days after he was questioned by police and a swab of his saliva was taken.

The Schweitzers sought that evidence to help them claim compensation from the state for wrongful imprisonment.

“We order the court not to release the discovery produced to it in the completed postconviction proceedings,” the 46-page Supreme Court opinion, written by Associate Justice Todd Eddins, states. “Any further determination on the release of those records should come from the presiding judge in the new civil case.

“The circuit court should transfer the discovery it holds to the new civil court judge (which may also be Judge Kubota, sitting in his civil capacity). The civil court will decide whether documents should be returned to HPD or produced and under what conditions or protections.”

The high court also found Kubota erred by setting an “overly compressed” timeline between the date the Schweitzers learned Lauro was dead, July 26, and a hearing on July 30 in which the judge invited the brothers to file a subpoena on Aug. 1 seeking the police’s evidence regarding Lauro.

“We fail to see the reason for the circuit court’s breakneck pace,” Eddins wrote. “Unlike the earlier petition for post-conviction relief — which released Ian from custody — the Schweitzers’ discovery request was only pertinent to their civil claim. … A slightly longer timeframe in this case would have made things more manageable for the attorneys and law enforcement, and allowed more time for the presentation of important issues.

“The timelines the circuit court set in this case between July 26 and August 1 were unreasonable.”

Hawaii law allows those wrongly imprisoned to claim $50,000 compensation for each year behind bars. That would translate to $1.3 million in the case of Ian Schweitzer, who was incarcerated for 26 years on charges of second-degree murder, first-degree sexual assault and kidnapping.

Shawn Schweitzer, who was a minor when the crime occurred, was indicted as an adult and pleaded guilty to manslaughter after his brother’s murder conviction. He was sentenced to probation with a year in jail — time he’d already served, having been incarcerated 18 months as a pretrial detainee.

Lauro’s DNA was found in semen, sweat and saliva gathered from the clothing, body and hospital gurney of Ireland, a 23-year-old from Virginia, as well as a men’s Jimmy Z T-shirt soaked in her blood.

His was the only DNA, other than Ireland’s, found on evidence in the case.

Lauro was questioned by police, and a swab of his saliva was taken July 19. He killed himself four days later, a day before the test on the swab confirmed he was the man whose DNA was collected from evidence gathered in the Ireland case.

There was no DNA found matching either of the Schweitzers or a third man convicted of the crime, the late Frank Pauline Jr. — who implicated the Schweitzers in a confession he later recanted — at a remote fishing trail in Waa Waa where the dying Ireland was found, or at the Kapoho site where she was intentionally struck by a vehicle while riding her sister’s bicycle.

And while Tuesday’s ruling has put the Schweitzers’ legal quest for compensation on hold, the high court suggested that if information gathered in the Lauro investigation exonerates the Schweitzers, it will at some point be available to them.

“The balance of a party’s right to discoverable information and a law enforcement agency’s needs will shift over time,” wrote Eddins, who cited a legal precedent that established “that the need to maintain law enforcement confidentiality is ‘seldom one of indefinite duration … .’”

“An investigation cannot go on forever, and a party cannot indefinitely wait to get documents related to its case,” the opinion stated.

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