Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Man gets prison for
strangling grandmother

By Treena Shapiro
Star-Bulletin

A 28-year-old man who strangled his grandmother in an Iolani Court Plaza apartment they shared pleaded guilty to manslaughter this morning.

Under a plea agreement, Denny Usui will serve at least 6 years and 8 months of a 20-year term.

Deputy Public Defender Todd Eddins said his client decided to accept the plea bargain because it would have been difficult to win on an insanity defense.

"Juries think it's just a means of escaping punishment," he said.

Usui could have faced life in prison if convicted of second degree murder.

He told Circuit Court Judge Virginia Crandall he was occasionally seeing a doctor at the Oahu Community Correctional Center and is currently on medication to treat paranoid schizophrenia.

He was diagnosed with the mental disorder in the early 1990s, Eddins said.

According to doctors' reports, Usui strangled his grandmother, Joyce M. Usui, because he believed aliens from the future had taken over her body.

Due to auditory hallucinations, Usui believed his 78-year-old grandmother wanted him to kill her, Eddins said.

Usui is scheduled to be sentenced April 11.