Jury goes for
lesser offense in
attempted-killing case

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin

Deputy Prosecutor Franklin Pacarro was "stunned and surprised" that a Circuit Court jury failed to convict a man of attempted murder, despite being shown videotapes of the man paying off a would-be killer.

Instead, the jury, which began deliberations late Monday, found Hung Van Huynh guilty of second-degree attempted assault, an offense that carries a maximum five years in prison.

Huynh would have faced up to life in prison without possibility of parole if he had been convicted of the attempted murder-for-hire charge.

Circuit Judge Wilfred Watanabe set sentencing for June 1. Bail was lowered from $1 million to $25,000 over Pacarro's objections.

Prosecutors said that Huynh in November 1997 paid an undercover police officer posing as a hit man $5,000 for the murder of Khanh Le, also known as Troung Le. Huynh also gave the officer a gun, prosecutors said.

Le is a rival of Huynh's in the lucrative shark-fin export business. Prosecutors said Huynh wanted to get rid of Le after he encroached on his turf.

Huynh was introduced to the undercover officer through a middleman, Henry Scanlan, a business associate of Huynh's.

Defense attorney Keith Shigetomi argued murder was not Huynh's intent. He accused Scanlan of pressuring Huynh into agreeing to pay for the murder. Shigetomi described Scanlan as a large, intimidating man who collected "protection" money from Huynh and others.

Huynh was convicted of manslaughter for shooting to death a Vietnamese man in a Port Arthur, Texas, bar in 1986, but that information was never provided to the jury.

He spent about a year in prison. He also spent three years in prison and was placed on probation in Texas for smuggling aliens. Pacarro said an agreement was made not to tell jurors about the manslaughter

Hawaii's Supreme Court has ruled that previous criminal convictions cannot be used as evidence against a defendant.