A measure of justice

LIHUE — Prosecuting Attorney Justin Kollar said there are a few reasons why his office offered Darren Galas a plea deal in relation to the 2006 death of his estranged wife, Sandra Galas.

He cited a rushed indictment used to sway an election, a case that wasn’t handled correctly and closure for the victim’s family.

On May 30, Galas, who was originally charged with one count of second-degree murder in one of Kauai’s most polarized and long-lasting cases, was sentenced in Fifth Circuit Court by Judge Kathleen Watanabe to 10 years in prison on a charge of first-degree assault.

Darren and Sandra Galas were married in 1999 and separated in 2005. Sandra Galas filed for divorce in August 2005. During the sentencing, Kollar read from several emails Sandra had written to her divorce attorney describing the level of fear she had been living through during her marriage.

Sandra Galas was 27 when she was found strangled in her vehicle at home in Eleele in January 2006. Darren Galas was a suspect at the time, but police didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him.

In an interview with The Garden Island newspaper, Kollar said the grand jury indictment for second-degree murder was returned a week and a half before the general election in 2012 and it was clear to everyone involved that the indictment was political,

“It highlights what can really go wrong when you let politics affect your decision-making as prosecutor. You cannot let your charging decisions or your management of the office be affected by political situations,” Kollar said.

He continued: “My predecessor did that because she sensed that things were going bad politically and she wanted something that would sway the outcome of the election,” Kollar said.

Kollar said his predecessor still lost the election and in rushing to bring the indictment, corners were cut that put the case on bad footing.

After examining the case in-depth, Kollar said the charge was reduced from murder in the second degree to assault in the first degree.

“We looked at the strength of the case, we looked at the strength of the evidence, we took all the factors into consideration, including the finality of the guaranteed result and negotiated what we believe is the best sentence we could get under the circumstances,” Kollar said.

Shaylene Iseri, former prosecuting attorney for the County of Kauai, said without a shadow of a doubt that she would have won this case had it gone to trial. Her team studied evidence and consulted multiple experts on the matter, she said.

Iseri said the grand jury indictment against Darren Galas in 2012 was not for political gain. The indictment, she said, was returned after about three hours of presenting evidence to the grand jury, with multiple witnesses.

“We wanted the case set as soon as possible, even if it was after the election because justice delayed, is justice denied,” she said.

To suggest there wasn’t enough evidence to prove the murder case, she said, is ludicrous.

“The only difference between an assault case and a murder case is that someone dies,” she said. “In this case, there was no dispute whether or not someone died. It wasn’t a suicide, it was a homicide, it wasn’t an assault, it was a murder, there’s no dispute that’s what happened.”

Because the case was constantly deferred, Iseri said the victim and the victim’s family were constantly re-victimized.

“That’s one of the key negative impacts you try to avoid,” she said.

The current prosecutor’s office, she said, lacked compassion to connect and believe in the victim and the family.

“They should have been ready to go with this case after we left (the prosecutor’s office). It was fresh in everybody’s mind, it had already been six years at that point and they delayed it for six more years and that’s horrible in a victim’s family life, to not be able to have any kind of closure for so long,” she said.

There’s no doubt in her mind, Iseri said, that Darren Galas committed this crime.

“That’s the one regret I’ll have in this life is not having the ability to take this case to jury trial,” she said.

Larry Mendonca previously told The Garden Island the day he learned of his daughter’s death was incredibly painful. That day, he said, his family was given a life sentence full of pain, sorrow, agony and frustration, “a life sentence with no parole. A life sentence, without Sandy.”

In an interview with TGI after the May 30 sentencing, Larry Mendonca said he was satisfied and grateful that the graveyard promise he made to his daughter to seek justice for her had been fulfilled.

“The pain is still there. We lost a dear person, so whatever happened it doesn’t bring it back, it doesn’t make it OK. But we’ll do whatever we can to move on,” he said.

Though he said a lot of the public is dissatisfied with the charge of assault one, Larry Mendonca said the plea was an acceptable alternative.

Prior to being elected as the county’s prosecutor, Kollar worked at the Kauai Police Department in the chief’s office as a legal adviser. At the time, he said, the prosecutor’s office was reluctant to take on the case, so it was sent to the Attorney General’s office where it was reviewed by Kevin Takata, who was a deputy attorney general at the time.

Takata, who would later come to work under Kollar as the First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, reviewed the case and submitted a list of recommendations that needed to be followed up on before the case could be charged.

After Kollar was elected, they looked over the case file and realized those recommendations weren’t completed.

The mishandling of the case, he said, put them in a position, where they had to make a decision to dismiss the case, which would run the risk of having it never come back, or they could hold onto it and try to salvage it in an attempt to get some justice for Sandy Galas and her family.

“So that’s what we did. I personally recognize that this is a situation that nobody walks away from and is happy about, but I know we did the right thing with the case and I’m very satisfied that a, Darren’s in prison and b, that Larry Mendonca got to see some justice in this case, that hopefully they (the Mendonca family), can have some small measure of closure and be able to move forward,” Kollar said.

Having the case closed, he said gives the Mendonca family the ability to move forward because they know there were consequences and in the end, accountability.

“So many abusers escape any punishment in our culture and in our society,” Kollar said.

This case, Kollar said, shows that no matter the adversity and no matter the problems, they weren’t going to let it go.

“At the end of the day, they (the defense) blinked, they decided that everything being what it is, they would take the plea and Darren’s in prison and Larry got to see that. That was important to him,” Kollar said.

The prosecutor’s office, Kollar said, has shown it is capable of prosecuting complex murder cases through trial with a successful verdict — it’s never a situation of being reluctant to try a case.

“It’s a question of getting the best result that we can with the facts and evidence that are available to us and again, not letting political considerations infect our decision-making as prosecutors because our job as prosecutors is to seek justice and not just convictions,” Kollar said.

In this case, Kollar said, a measure of justice was served.

“An imperfect measure, but it was a measure of justice,” he said.

In situations like this, Kollar said everybody loses.

“The community lost Sandra, Sandra’s family lost her, Sandra’s kids have now lost basically both of their parents for the time being,” he said. “You’ve got to feel bad for the kids and my heart goes out to everyone that lost loved ones as a result of this case as a result of every domestic violence situation in our community.”