Associated Press
Judge Riki May Amano, above, "deserves a lot of credit
for keeping this trial dignified," said John Ireland, Dana's father.
Verdict didn’t surprise
some observers of trial'My gut feeling told me it
By Dana Williams and Cynthia Oi
would be this way,' said
a man watching the trial
Star-BulletinHILO -- After the verdict was read in the Frank Pauline Jr. murder trial yesterday, Dorothy Martins leaned over a court bench and hugged John and Louise Ireland.
Martins' daughter, Yvonne Mathison, was killed in 1992. Mathison's husband, a police officer, was later found guilty of the murder.
"We wanted to support the Irelands in the last days," said Martins, who sat with her husband as jurors deliberated.
A few moments later, Marlena Pauline was crouched on the floor next to a water cooler down the hall.
Holding a cell phone against her ear, she fruitlessly wiped away a stream of tears as she conveyed the news to her mother, Patricia, who was unable to make it to court yesterday.
"Ma, ma," she murmured into the phone.
Marlena's brother Frank had just been convicted of the murder, kidnapping and sexual assault of Dana Ireland.
Marlena's half-brother, Joe, pain creasing his face, escaped for a minute in the restroom while his girlfriend, Evie Caseres wept, saying, "It's so unfair, so unfair."
Courtroom observer Walter Grace sat through most of the trial, and said he wasn't surprised when he heard the verdict.
"My gut feeling told me it would be this way," he said. "Guilty on all charges."
Grace said Dana Ireland was "an innocent individual that got caught at the wrong place at the wrong time."
Lei Jack, a waitress who works at night, sat through most of the trial because she is interested in the criminal justice system, "how well the system works."
"This case has really affected the community; people talk about it and took both sides" she said. "I feel like they (police and prosecutors) felt really pressed into trying to find out the who and the what."
She thought the verdict reflected the belief of most of the people she talked to: that Pauline is guilty.
After the crowd cleared away yesterday, John Ireland had praise for the way the trial was handled.
"Judge (Riki May) Amano deserves a lot of credit for keeping this trial dignified," he said. "I was concerned for a few years that if there ever was a trial it was going to turn into a three-ring circus. But Judge Amano avoided that. I'll always be indebted to her for that."
Ireland said he didn't know what his daughter would have thought about the trial.
"I don't think Dana would be happy," he said. "She was the type that would feel for the convict's family, and probably for him also."
Associated Press
Prosecutors Lincoln Ashida and Charlene Iboshi confer
during the trial. Ashida agreed that the use of audiotapes
and videotapes is something Big Island police and
prosecutors can work on.
Jurors suggest
By Dana Williams
better police
documentation
Star-BulletinHILO -- Better documentation by Big Island police would have been helpful to jurors in the Frank Pauline Jr. murder trial, the jury forewoman said yesterday.
"There were gaps for us. There were things that we wished had been accomplished that weren't accomplished," said Gwen Kaneshiro. "One of the chief ones of those was the fact that there were no tape recorders, no video cameras, no note taking" when Pauline led police on a reconstruction of the crime.
"That bothered us that the police didn't do that," Kaneshiro said.
Detective Steven Guillermo, lead investigator on the Dana Ireland murder case, testified that although audio and video equipment were available to police in 1994, it wasn't always used during suspect interviews and reconstructions.
"The detective mentioned that it's a practice that continues to this day, and if that's true, we think it's probably time for the police to change their procedures immediately," Kaneshiro said. "In this day and age of high tech, there should have been a record of that."
Overall, Kaneshiro said, jury members felt Guillermo did a thorough job of investigating the case.
Deputy Prosecutor Lincoln Ashida, who helped prosecute Pauline, said the use of audiotapes and videotapes is something police and prosecutors can work on, based on the jury's suggestion.
"We're going to listen to what they have to say, because they are the voice of this community," Ashida said.
Dana Ireland Archive
Trial witnesses summary
