The Hawaii Supreme Court has affirmed the murder conviction of Dae Han Moon for the fatal shooting of 20-year old Stevie Feliciano at Ala Moana Center on Christmas 2016. The court’s majority opinion, filed in court on February 10, was written by Chief Justice Recktenwald, with Justice Michael Wilson dissenting.

A jury convicted Moon of second degree murder and two weapons charges in September 2018 after a jury trial, and he was sentenced to life in prison with the possiblity of parole, with a mandatory 15-year minimum, for second degree murder. He was also convicted on two firearms charges, and sentenced to 10 years on each charge, to be served concurrently with the murder sentence.

At the time of the shooting, both Moon and Feliciano were just 20 years old.

In July 2020, Moon was arrested and charged along with former Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control owner Michael J. Miske, Jr., and nine co-defendants, with participating in a racketeering organization which Miske is alleged to have controlled and directed. According to the indictment, Moon was part what prosecutors call the Miske Enterprise, took part in a murder-for-hire plot targeting a Waimanalo man Miske suspected of cooperating with law enforcement, and being part of the group’s related drug trafficking conspiracy.

Moon has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges and is currently being held at the Federal Detention Center awaiting trial, now scheduled to begin in September.

At the end of his original murder trial in state court, court-appointed attorney Emmanuel “Manny” Guerrero “made a motion for judgment of acquittal, arguing that while “a doctor had pronounced Feliciano brain dead, and that the cause of his death was a gunshot wound to the head,” the additional requirements of HRS § 327C-18, which apply to organ donors, had not been followed, and that therefore the medical determination that his death was the result of the gunshot wound was improper.

Prosecutors disagreed, and contended that HRS § 327C-1 was inapplicable and, based on the evidence presented, there was no question that Feliciano was dead.

The Circuit Court agreed with the state and denied the motion. Guerrero eventually appealed on similar grounds, and the appeal was transferred to the Supreme Court. Oral arguments were held in August 2021.

In its ruling last week, the court reviewed the legislative history of the statute in question, HRS § 327C-1, and determined it was “directed at health care providers – particularly those involved in the process of determining whether organs may be removed from an individual for transplantation. The specific procedure outlined in the statute was designed to be a safe harbor from civil or criminal liability.”

Based on its legislative history, the court found the circumstances of Feliciano’s death did not require compliance with this statute.

“Thus, while HRS § 327C-1 provides a way in which death can be established, it does not provide the only way in which the fact of death must be established,” the court concluded.

As recently as February 1, Moon’s current attorney, Kauai-based Matthew Mannisto, noted the Supreme Court appeal in a filing in Moon’s federal case, optimistically stating the court “may be poised to overturn his conviction shortly before (or during) the trial in the present matter, and a reversal will likely generate its own flurry of publicity.”

However, Friday’s Hawaii Supreme Court drew no news media attention.

You can read the court’s full opinion here.