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Jury convicts woman
in boyfriend’s murder

Man who shot wife pleads guilty

By Debra Barayuga
Star-Bulletin

A Makaha woman accused of stabbing her boyfriend to death has been found guilty of second-degree murder.

A Circuit Court jury convicted Lana Sayers of the charge yesterday after 4-hours of deliberation. The jury rejected lesser offenses such as reckless manslaughter or manslaughter based on extreme mental emotional disturbance.

Sayers faces life imprisonment with the possibility of parole when sentenced April 10 before Judge Karen Ahn.

Sayers refused to stand after the verdict was read and stared stonily at the jurors as they filed out of the courtroom.

"What kind of s--- is this?" she asked her attorney, Mark Worsham.

Jennifer Ching, deputy prosecutor, said the jury relied on "overwhelming" evidence from more than 20 witnesses who saw what happened between the two and indicated Sayers was the aggressor.

Witnesses saw her brandishing a knife as she straddled Edwin Kalama, who lay on the ground out in full view on Date Street in Makaha. They also saw her chasing him down the street as he tried to stem the flow of blood from his wounds, Ching said.

A history of squabbles

"This was a classic case of domestic violence in reverse, with the female as an abuser," she said.

Some may think mistakenly that females who abuse or kill are victims of abuse themselves, but this was not the case, Ching said.

Sayers had abused and stabbed Kalama in the past, but he always kept quiet, Ching said.

Worsham said the couple's past domestic squabbles weren't relevant and that relationships where the female is dominant and the male submissive aren't uncommon. "(Kalama) could have walked anytime," but didn't and kept returning to her, Worsham said.

The couple had been together for 13 years.

Sayers testified she had pulled a knife on Kalama but only intended to scare him into telling her the truth about $100 supposedly missing from their account, her attorney, Worsham, said.

"The evidence, unfortunately for Lana, was very strong, and because of her state of mind, we were unable to muster anything of substance that would have a permanent effect on a jury."

She laughed during trial and would have showed up in court in a prison uniform if the judge hadn't asked her to to don civilian clothes, Worsham said.

Some jurors had questioned why Sayers took the stand, saying it hurt her case more, Worsham said. He disagreed, however, that the evidence was "overwhelming."

He said the state failed to test DNA from the knife allegedly used in the stabbing to see if it matched either Sayers' or Kalama's.

Also, blood samples taken from the street, Kalama's shirt and Sayers were compared only with a blood sample from Kalama after he had been infused with 26 pints of other people's blood, he said.

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Man who shot wife
pleads guilty to
reduced charge

The attempted manslaughter
plea comes with a 10-year
minimum prison term

By Debra Barayuga
Star-Bulletin

A 69-year-old man has pleaded guilty to attempting to gun down his wife on a busy Kakaako street three years ago.

Roman Perez, charged with second-degree attempted murder, pleaded guilty yesterday to a lesser charge of attempted manslaughter, based on extreme mental and emotional distress.

Under a plea agreement, Perez agreed to a 20-year prison term for the manslaughter, with a 10-year mandatory minimum for the use of a semiautomatic firearm.

Perez agreed to the deal because he didn't want to risk another trial and it was to his benefit, said his attorney, deputy public defender William Jameson.

The Hawaii Paroling Authority had given Perez a 30-year minimum term after he was convicted in 1997 of second-degree attempted murder at his first trial. He would have been 99 before he would have been eligible for parole.

With the mandatory 10 years he now faces, Perez won't be eligible for parole until he's 75, said Deputy Prosecutor Glenn Kim.

However, because Perez has been incarcerated for nearly five years since the July 1996 shooting, he will only have to serve another five more years before he can ask the parole board to reduce the minimum term, Jameson said.

Perez was accused of shooting his estranged wife Nova at Queen and South streets and shooting at onlookers who tried to help her. Police cornered him in the parking lot of the Hawaii Newspaper Agency, where his wife worked as a mailer.

Nova, then 31, was lucky the bullet that struck her in the back didn't do serious damage, Kim said. The bullet entered a few inches from her spine.

Perez had testified at trial he had gone to her workplace with the intention of talking to her and shooting himself. Their marriage apparently had deteriorated after she left him for another woman. He testified he aimed at her side and fired the shots to get her to stop and listen to him.

Perez yesterday also pleaded guilty as charged to first-degree assault and two counts of second-degree reckless endangering -- offenses punishable by 10 years and five years, respectively.

He will serve those terms concurrently with the 20 years for the manslaughter charge.

Perez faced a second trial in April after the Hawaii Supreme Court affirmed a ruling that a Circuit Court judge incorrectly instructed the jury.