Brun sentenced to 20 years for Kaua‘i drug trafficking ring

LIHU‘E — U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson sentenced former County Councilmember Arthur Brun to a term of 20 years imprisonment without possibility of parole at a hearing Wednesday morning for charges related to running a drug-trafficking ring on Kaua‘i.

“Although the defense disagrees with the severity of the sentence, it is clear from comments made during the hearing that the judge considered all the factors in mitigation and aggravation before imposing the sentence he believed to be warranted under the circumstances,” said Brun’s lawyer Rustam Barbee.

Brun, now 50, will be 70 upon his release.

In March, Watson rejected a plea deal Brun had reached with prosecutors, claiming that the 15-year sentence was too lenient.

Brun reaffirmed his guilt in an O‘ahu courtroom Wednesday, admitting to 10 felonies ranging from drug distribution, assault of a federal officer, attempting to obtain a weapon for a felon, and evidence- and witness-tampering.

Watson sentenced Brun to 240 months for nine of the counts and 60 months for the weapons charge, with all terms to run at the same time. Brun was also sentenced to an additional five years of supervised release.

The court recommended that Brun be placed in Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island, a low-security prison in Los Angeles. Lompoc FCI, a low-security prison in California, and Sheridan FCI, a medium-security prison in Oregon, were listed as the second and third choices, respectively.

They also recommended that Brun be placed in a 500-hour residential-drug-abuse program and that he receive a mental-health assessment and vocational and educational training.

The former councilmember faced charges in the early 2000s for theft, domestic violence, computer fraud and drug possession, but after serving a couple brief jail sentences and receiving drug treatment, he appeared to have turned his life around.

He began working as a third-party coordinator at the agrichemical company Syngenta, and in 2014 won a seat on the Kaua‘i County Council. In a 2014 interview with Kaua‘i Eclectic, he reported that he’d “been clean for 10 years.”

In 2016, he was working with the Kaua‘i Community Correctional Center Church on the Beach program, where he would transport inmates in community custody to and from church events on various Sundays.

Around 2018, according to a sentencing memo from District of Hawai‘i U.S. Attorneys, Brun fell back into drug use and began selling meth to feed his habit, working with some of the same prisoners he had transported at KCCC.

One of those inmates was Maluelue Umu, who allegedly had connections to the United Samoan Organization gang and who was later indicted along with the former councilmember.

Brun is described in the memo as a “careless and reckless” trafficker, who didn’t make much money from trafficking activities, and who would sometimes spend days not participating in illegal activities because he was recovering from heavy drug use.

Then a sitting councilmember, Brun was arrested by Kaua‘i police in Oct. 2019 after a brief car chase, during which he injured a Kaua‘i Police Department officer and threw a one-pound bag of methamphetamine out his vehicle window.

While out on bail, he was involved in a car accident where he crossed the center line, injuring himself, another driver and a 6-year-old boy. At the time, Brun had been transporting meth and cash, according to court documents.

He was arrested again and indicted in February 2020 along with 11 others. Each of the co-defendants in the case, including Umu, have also pleaded guilty and await sentencing.

Though he was stripped of his voting rights on the council, Brun continued to receive a salary from the county until Dec. 2020.

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Guthrie Scrimgeour, reporter, can be reached at 647-0329 or gscrimgeour@thegardenisland.com.