A federal judge yesterday denied a motion brought on behalf of Dae Han Moon seeking to expand access to computers at the Honolulu Federal Detention Center in order to review evidence in his case and effectively participate in his own defense.

Moon, 26, is the youngest of the twelve co-defendants charged with being a member of a racketeering organization controlled and directed by former Honolulu business owner Michael John Miske, Jr.

But despite his relative youth, Moon is the only Miske defendant to have already been convicted of murder. He was convicted after a jury trial of being the gunman who shot and killed a 20-year old man in a parking lot at Ala Moana Center on Christmas 2016 when a scuffle broke out during what appears to have been a botched attempt to collect a small drug debt. Moon, who was also just 20 at the time, was was convicted of murder and related firearms charges in September 2018, and sentenced to a life term with the possibility of parole.

In the Miske case, Moon is charged with racketeering conspiracy, murder-for-hire conspiracy, and a drug-related conspiracy charge.

The motion, filed by attorney Lars Isaacson in June, asked that Moon be allowed to have his own laptop, or have be permitted 20-hours per week using a dedicated government computer to review the estimated 1.5 million pages of documents and “voluminous other materials” produced by the government in his case.

Earlier in the case, Miske was granted special computer access due to the vast amount of evidence to be reviewed, but he remains the only defendant to have been granted additional computer privileges.

A hearing on Moon’s motion was held on Thursday morning, September 1. Moon was represented at the hearing by Kauai attorney Matthew Monisto, who had been assigned to his case just two weeks earlier. Two prior attorneys were allowed to withdraw from his case after experiencing “a breakdown” in the attorney/client relationship.

It took Magistrate Judge Kenneth Mansfield just a few hours to issue an order denying Moon’s motion for additional computer time, saying that while Moon said his computer access was “insufficient” to review the amount of discovery in the case, “he does not claim that he has, in fact, been denied all of the computer access he has wanted. Moon also does not assert that he has ever requested, let alone been denied, access to the law library computer.”

Absent an actual dispute over the amount of computer access, Mansfield said the court “has limited authority to direct the daily management of detention facilities.”

Although Mansfield said he could intervene if conditions in the detention center “impair [Moon’s] right of court access or right to counsel,” no evidence of such a constitutional issue had been presented.

“On this record, Moon falls short of establishing lack of adequate access to the court or counsel,” Mansfield’s order concluded. “Moon has not exhausted his currently available computer time to review discovery. Under the circumstances, the Court is in no position to direct the BOP to provide greater access. In short, there is no evidence that BOP’s policies are unfairly or unjustifiably obstructing Moon’s ability to review discovery.”

Lance Bermudez, who is also charged in the Miske case, was convicted earlier of threatening witnesses to Moon’s role in the Christmas 2016 shooting. Bermudez is scheduled to change his “not guilty” plea at a hearing next week. If his guilty plea is accepted, he will be the sixth of the original ten Miske co-defendants to plead guilty as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.

Also see:

“Miske Case Weaves Together Disparate Strands Of Past Crimes,” Civil Beat, Jan 21, 2021

“Supreme Court to hear appeal of shooter convicted in 2016 Christmas murder at Ala Moana Center“, iLind.net, Aug 16, 2021

“Recent court activity in the case of Mike Miske and his co-defendants,” iLind.net, July 5, 2022

Order Denying Dae Han Moon motion to compel computer access by Ian Lind on Scribd