Meth charge dismissed

LIHUE — A Kekaha man may have sidestepped a 10-year prison sentence he faced after pleading guilty last year to federal meth-trafficking charges.

According to charging documents in a U.S. District Court case, Chad “Kaleo” Correia ran into trouble in September when the daughter of a woman he was living with called police to their home in Kekaha.

A special agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said in an affidavit that the woman, identified only as “the caller,” became suspicious of Correia after coming home from work one afternoon to find her dog playing on the front porch with a bag of meth.

An officer with the Kauai Police Department, who responded to the 911 call that came in around 4 a.m., arrived at the residence to find a woman who told her she had found the drugs on an afternoon three days before and was told by Correia that they belonged to a friend. The woman reportedly told police she waited to call because she was afraid of Correia.

The caller escorted the police officer to a bedroom, according to the affidavit, and pointed to two blue-colored bags covered by a pair of brown pants on the floor of a closet.

The officer began to remove the pants when she noticed that one partially-opened bag contained “bundles of cash and a Ziploc-type baggie containing a crystalline substance,” which turned out to be about $16,000 in cash and a couple ounces of methamphetamine, according to the affidavit.

Later that day, KPD officers returned to the house with a search warrant.

Police allegedly found a rifle and ammunition in Correia’s bedroom closet, over half a pound of meth on his bathroom floor, a backpack containing another couple pounds of meth in vacuum-sealed bags, and a second rifle in the carport inside a gun case alongside more ammo, more drugs and a meth pipe.

As for Correia, he had been on Kauai until the morning the female roommate had discovered the dog chewing on the Ziploc bag of ice, at which point he “temporarily traveled to another island,” according to the affidavit.

Court documents show Correia was arrested in Lihue about 10 days after the search of his house and charged in federal court with two felonies — one for the firearms, which, as a convicted felon, he is prohibited from owning, and possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine.

The weapons felony carried a mandatory minimum one-year prison sentence, and the meth charge was worth 10 years to life. About a month later, Correia pleaded guilty to both counts.

But in March, a judge threw out the plea, refusing to accept the agreement drafted by federal prosecutors due to the inclusion of paragraphs having Correia waive his constitutional rights, according to the minutes of a March 11 hearing in U.S. District Court in Honolulu.

In a March 25 letter to the judge, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenji Price said the plea agreement contained a waiver provision “that the court determined was too broad.”

According to Price’s letter, the judge also objected to the 10-year sentence contained in the plea agreement signed by Correia, citing concerns “that a 120-month sentence for that count of conviction, under the circumstances of this case —including the fact that the defendant was on supervised release at the time of the offense — would create an unwarranted sentencing disparity with other defendants sentenced for committing that same offense.”

Correia pleaded guilty to a single firearms charge last month and on Wednesday the judge overseeing his case signed an order dismissing the methamphetamine charge “without prejudice,” a stipulation that means the state can bring another case based on the same incident. As of Friday afternoon, no further charges against Correia have been filed.

He is scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 5 for sentencing. He faces at least one year in prison.

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Caleb Loehrer, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0441 or cloehrer@thegardenisland.com.