Parole board Seventy-four-year-old Ellen Lum always had a stash of Chinese seeds and candy that she handed out to cashiers at the Safeway Supermarket on Beretania and to preschool teachers at Makiki Christian Church across from her Rycroft Street home, said son Benjamin Lum.
hears Kauhi case
The son of Ellen Lum says the
community is poorer for her murderBy Debra Barayuga
dbarayuga@starbulletin.comAnd she knew the birthdays of all her six children and nine grandchildren "whom she loved with her immense heart."
Lum, the youngest of Ellen Lum's four sons, spoke of her yesterday to members of the Hawaii Paroling Authority to ensure she was not just another murder statistic, but a beloved mother whose brutal murder caused a ripple effect on those who knew her.
The board is expected to decide in upcoming weeks how long Lum's murderer, Samson Kauhi, must spend in prison before he can seek parole.
Ellen Lum, 4-feet-11 and about 110 pounds, was punched, choked, stomped on and had her mouth taped shut by burglars who broke into her home on Nov. 14, 1994. The mother of the 15-month-old baby Lum was baby-sitting discovered her body when she returned later that afternoon.
Kauhi, 39, pleaded guilty a year ago to second-degree murder for causing Lum's death, averting a second trial. Kauhi, his girlfriend and brother apparently mistook Lum for the mother of a man they believed had crystal methamphetamine. Kauhi was on parole at the time and had just been released from prison six months earlier.
Benjamin Lum said it was their family's hope that Kauhi be put away for a long time, "so long that when he is released, if he is still alive, he will be too old, decrepit and helpless to hurt anyone else."
The past seven years have been a nightmare for the Lums, who saw Kauhi found guilty of second-degree murder in 1995 and the conviction overturned by the Hawaii Supreme Court two years later because of flawed jury selection.
Four months have passed since Judge Wilfred Watanabe sentenced Kauhi to a life term with a mandatory minimum of 15 years under a provision governing crimes against the elderly.
The parole board cannot go lower than the 15 years mandated by the court.
Cliff Hunt, Kauhi's attorney, says the parole board should bind itself to the 40-year term it first issued after Kauhi's conviction in 1995.
Circumstances have not changed since the board originally imposed the 40 years, other than that Kauhi had successfully appealed his conviction, changed his plea and expressed his remorse, Hunt said. Raising the minimum term would "effectively punish his right to appeal."
Paroling Authority Chairman Al Beaver said he will consult the attorney general for an opinion before the board issues its decision.
Under a plea agreement, the state did not make a recommendation to the parole board, said Deputy Prosecutor Lahoma Fernandes-Nakata. The state also dismissed a second count of first-degree burglary.
Kauhi's girlfriend, Leann Abraham, pleaded guilty to first-degree burglary and served two years of a 10-year sentence. She was paroled in June 1998.
Harry Kauhi pleaded guilty to first-degree burglary as an accomplice and firearms charges and served five years of a 10-year sentence. He was paroled in March this year.
In a written tribute, Benjamin Lum revered Lum's hands. "The hands that worked Popo's shop during the war, the hands that filled pineapples in the Dole cans and the very hands that rubbed my chest to ease the pain of my frequent enemy," Lum recalled, noting he had suffered from asthma as a child that left him coughing uncontrollably at night.
At her funeral, he did not recognize her because she had been beaten so brutally. But as another brother commented, there was no mistaking her hands.