A state appellate court has overturned the murder conviction of a 23-year-old Puna man who admitted to the 2007 shotgun slaying of a friend after discovering him having sex with the defendant’s girlfriend. A state appellate court has overturned the
A state appellate court has overturned the murder conviction of a 23-year-old Puna man who admitted to the 2007 shotgun slaying of a friend after discovering him having sex with the defendant’s girlfriend.
The unanimous opinion of a three-judge panel of the Intermediate Court of Appeals orders a new murder trial for Malaki McBride. The appeals court ruled that Hilo Circuit Judge Glenn Hara’s oral instructions to the jury on the extreme mental or emotional disturbance defense differed from the agreed-to written instructions. The opinion stated that the judge’s “erroneous reading of the EMED instruction not only rendered the instruction wrong on the law, but also utterly confusing and misleading.”
“We have to wait for judgment to come out, because this is just opinion,” said Deputy Prosecutor Michael Kagami, who tried the case for the state originally and plans to refile it.
McBride was sentenced to life plus 20 years in 2010 for the shooting death of 21-year-old Tyrone Torres, who was killed Feb. 25, 2007, while seated in a car parked in a secluded cul-de-sac in Nanawale Estates. McBride was 17 when the shooting occurred, but he was tried as an adult on charges of second-degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a separate felony and auto theft.
