LIHU‘E — A convicted murderer sentenced to life in prison in 2001 after dousing his wife in cleaning fluid and lighting her on fire had his parole minimum doubled to 120 years following a recent hearing that forced family members to relive the traumatic episode.
“It was heartbreaking. It brought up all the emotions and feelings all over again,” Colleen Louis, sister of the late Miu Lan Esposo-Aguiar, said Wednesday. “Having to relive this horrible nightmare and seeing him felt like it only happened yesterday.”
On March 12, 2000, Gregory Manuel Aguiar set wife Miu Lan ablaze near their ‘Ele‘ele home. After running out into the street in flames, she was burned over 70 percent of her body and lived for three weeks in a Honolulu hospital before she died. Aguiar eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
After being sentenced to life in prison with the possibility for parole, Aguiar had a parole minimum hearing and was allowed to petition for a new minimum after serving one-third of that minimum. However, due to a procedural error and an appeals court precedent established in Coulter vs. Hawai‘i, Aguiar had the option of requesting a new Rule 40 hearing before serving 20 years of his 60-year parole minimum, prosecutors and parole officials said.
On Oct. 14, 2009, Aguiar’s request was heard by the three-member Hawai‘i Parole Board, according to Hawai‘i Paroling Authority Division Administrator Max Otani. Based on “the nature of the offense and the degree of injury or loss to persons,” Aguiar, available via teleconference from prison in Arizona, was given a Level 3 rating for punishment and his minimum parole term was doubled to 120 years, Otani said.
Former First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Lori Wada said before her departure from the county government that forcing family members to again testify about Miu Lan and the incident was “blatant injustice” but the results of the hearing eventually helped give the family closure.
“It was very traumatic for Miu Lan’s two younger children, they were only 13 and 18 at the time” of the murder, Louis said this week in an e-mail. “Now they finally got the chance to speak out how they felt and finally get closure for themselves.
“I am very grateful the board saw him for what he really is or they would not have doubled his sentence. If the possibility of parole should ever arise, I will be there again to defend my sister. This was her last request of me and I intend to keep my promise,” she said.
Aguiar, who was 50 when he was sentenced, will need to serve 40 years before he can even request another hearing unless health issues become a factor, Otani said.
“He shouldn’t be able to come out at all,” Melissa Rivera, also sister to Miu Lan, said in October. “What gives him the right to come out? Our sister is not here.”
Louis agreed, saying, “He took somebody else’s life so maliciously that I don’t think that he should ever be allowed out of prison.”
Repeated phone messages left for Parole Board Chairman Albert Tufono seeking the board’s rationale behind the decision to double the minimum term were unreturned as of press time.
“Each member will look at the aspects of the conviction differently,” Otani said.
Wada said Aguiar was warned about the possibility that the minimum could be set higher but insisted on moving forward with the hearing and showed little remorse for his crime, comparing his offense to another family member’s negligent homicide conviction following a traffic accident.
Wada said the family was sickened by his testimony and felt he “just (didn’t) get it.” When the board told Aguiar he would spend the rest of his life behind bars and promised during the hearing that the minimum would be increased, family members were very emotional, she said.
“We go to her grave and put flowers on her grave,” Rivera said in October. “We’re gonna do whatever we got to do. We’re fighting for her. She’s not here to defend herself.
“I am relieved and happy of the outcome. As for fairness, there’s no fairness in this case. A man who has done an inhuman act to take someone else’s life should not be given the chance to be ever released,” Rivera said in the recent e-mail. “It doesn’t matter how many times we have to go before the parole board. I too will be there to defend my sister.”
•Michael Levine, assistant news editor, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or mlevine@kauaipubco.com.
