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193 C H A P T E R 1 2 The Trial He got up in the morning. He came inside here, and I could see he was kind of hungry. I was doing some paperwork, sitting down and watching the TV. So he sat down. I ask him, “Is there any special program you like watch?” He said “Nah, nah, I just watch whateva you watching.” But I wasn’t actually paying attention ’cause I was doing some paperwork, so I told him, “You hungry, you go cook. Don’t expect me to cook for you, or you gotta wait till your madda come home.” He said, “Where she went?” “She went Kāne‘ohe.” So he went back to his room, and then came back and sat in the same chair. So I put my paperwork down. I figure to myself something’s wrong. So I ask him, “Percy. Is there anything troubling you?” He look at me and he tell me, “What?” “Is there anything bothering you?” He tell me, “Why?” You know the first time was all right, but this is the second time. I neva wait for the third time, so I ask him if something’s wrong. He tell me, “No, no, no.” He stood up and he went. Until that evening, he went. The reason I was telling you the word “regret” was ’cause I gave him the opportunity to correspond with me. The thing is, I don’t know, to me something was troubling him. But I didn’t expect anything bad about it. —George Kipapa, June 7, 2007 By the third afternoon of Percy’s murder trial, seating in Judge Karl K. Sakamoto’s tiny courtroom was getting harder to come by. And though both families were starting to line up outside the locked door a good fifteen minutes before each recess was set to end, the potentially volatile scene remained surprisingly calm throughout the trial, with Kurt’s 194 Chapter 12 big tattooed sons, for instance, even going out of their way to make space for the defendant’s family. A low roar of separate conversations filled the air, but, as if out of some unspoken respect for the fact that it might lead to conflict, none of it touched upon the events of the case. And then right after lunch that day, Wednesday, the ebb and flow in the cramped hallway brought Tyler Hopkins within inches of Keali‘i Meheula. The defendant was dressed in a new blue suit and a blue tie, his hair cut neatly and jelled, his round face shaved clean, and his thick neck exposed above the collar of a white oxford shirt. For a long moment Tyler appeared to forget where he was, finding himself looking straight down on the man who had killed Percy. He seemed to have tuned out the noise around him as he stared into that exposed neck, right there in front of his eyes. “T!” I called to him from across the noisy hallway. Against Deputy Prosecutor Glenn Kim’s strenuous pleas, Judge Marcia Waldorff had granted Meheula bail nine months earlier, after giving him “instructions” to “stay away” from Percy’s family and potential witnesses . Kim had quickly moved to have bail revoked, arguing that Meheula “was already out on bail when he killed Mr. Kipapa.” Kim went on to argue that the rest of the family and other potential witnesses were scared. Meheula’s state-appointed attorney, William C. Domingo, came back with what turned out to be the winning argument: “He’s already been out on bail for a week, and he hasn’t hurt anyone yet.” Duane “Dog” Chapman had been happy to post the $150,000. “How’s that?” Keith Ryder told me. “My sister was scared.” One could easily imagine Meheula going after Keith’s sister Lori—a witness in the case—or Willidean Makepa, or Josh Wilson, and then jumping bail. I’d spent the last several months dreading the thought of seeing Meheula’s face on TV as he gets the “lecture” in the back of Chapman’s SUV: “Even if you make a mistake you can change, but I tell ya brother, if you insist on making mistakes, we’re goin’ to get ya every time.” I could imagine Chapman’s wife waddling into Mrs. Kipapa’s yard with a TV crew in tow, dressed like an American flag, designer sunglasses perched on her forehead , and twanging out in haole...

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