LIHUE — A Kekaha man was sentenced to five years in jail after a Kauai judge said he was making a “mockery of the process” when he failed to properly fill out paperwork to get into rehabilitation. After returning from
LIHUE — A Kekaha man was sentenced to five years in jail after a Kauai judge said he was making a “mockery of the process” when he failed to properly fill out paperwork to get into rehabilitation.
After returning from temporary release, 23-year-old Dylan Crowell tested positive for amphetamine while on HOPE probation. The positive drug test comes after Fifth Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Watanabe allowed him to attend his grandfather’s funeral.
The court revoked his probation and sentenced him to the open five terms for second-degree theft.
“When the court received the request to allow some compassion to attend your grandfather’s funeral so that you could pay your respects, this court did not hesitate to approve that request,” Watanabe said. “The report from KCCC is very clear, you tested positive. That does not look good on your part. It tells me that you took advantage of the system. And that you took advantage of the court.”
It was his fourth violation in two months since he was sentenced Oct. 29 to four years HOPE probation and nine months in jail after he was convicted of theft in the second degree for stealing a backpack off a camper while they slept at Polihale State Park.
Kauai officers in that case had to use an iPhone tracker app to locate Crowell to find the green Patagonia backpack with $300 worth of items that included everything from a phone to an albuterol inhaler.
Watanabe told Crowell that when he did not properly fill out forms to get into a rehab center, he lacked motivation and intention to seek help.
“It tells me that you’re making a mockery of the whole process, of the resources that are limited,” she said.
Crowell said he had filled out a form while incarcerated for Habilitat, a long-term drug rehabilitation center on Oahu. The only problem, according to his probation officer, was that Crowell had not completely filled out the form.
But Crowell had just told Watanabe that he had completely filled out the form.
Moments later, probation officer Magda Latif-Sterioff told the court that Crowell had failed to fill out family or personal information on the form such as “eye color,” “father information” and “mother information.”
Crowell clarified that he didn’t know his father’s information or his mother’s address, but he did know his eye color and had failed to input that on the form. Watanabe said she’d heard enough.
Crowell’s record includes disorderly conduct in 2011, two theft three convictions, criminal trespass two convictions, and a theft four conviction in 2013.
He pleaded no contest to promoting a harmful drug in the fourth degree on March 14 and sentenced to 171 days in jail.
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Michelle Iracheta, cops and courts reporter, can be reached at 245-0424 or miracheta@thegardenisland.com.
