HONOLULU — An O‘ahu Circuit Court judge found Anthony F. Pereira II guilty as charged Tuesday of second-degree murder in the June 10, 2016, shooting death of his 66-year-old mother, Barbara Pereira, at his home in Maili.
Judge Rowena Somerville found the defense failed to prove the affirmative defense that Pereira experienced an extreme mental or emotional disturbance that caused him to kill his mother, which could have led to a guilty verdict of the lesser crime of manslaughter, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Instead the 52-year-old former O‘ahu Community Correctional Center training sergeant will face life in prison with the possibility of parole when he is sentenced Oct. 2. But the state could seek an extended sentence for Pereira as a multiple offender and as an offender against the elderly, which by state law means 60 or older. That could mean life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
The judge also found him guilty of kidnapping, first-degree terroristic threatening, two counts of carrying or use of a firearm in the commission of a separate felony and third-degree promotion of a dangerous drug.
Somerville said the defense provided no reasonable explanation as to why Pereira shot his mother, and no evidence he was suffering from an emotional or mental disturbance.
She noted that Pereira said he does not remember shooting his mother in the head or saying he was drinking and doing drugs.
Somerville recounted the events that led up to the shooting of Barbara Pereira before rendering her verdict.
She said she found credible the testimony of Dodie Guzman, a 56-year-old woman who described how she met Pereira June 8, 2016, at a mutual friend’s house. Pereira asked her to come with him to his house for a quick stop, but instead locked the gate with a padlock and didn’t let her leave for three days.
Somerville described how Pereira shot his mother in the thigh, then shot at Guzman.
The judge found Pereira guilty of threatening to terrorize Guzman with a gun.
She also found him guilty of kidnapping his mother when he tried to prevent her from leaving voluntarily, and by shooting her in the leg.
Somerville said she found psychologist John Compton’s testimony unreliable because he was unable to provide an assessment as to Pereira’s volitional and cognitive capacity.
Compton found that Pereira had adequate cognitive capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct, but the degree to which his volitional capacity is impaired needs more careful assessment.
Somerville also noted that Compton wrote that staff at the Hawai‘i State Hospital suggested Pereira had exaggerated his symptoms.
Harrison Kiehm, Pereira’s court-appointed attorney, said that on the witness stand, Compton “did testify that a person’s emotions can interfere with a person’s rational processes.”
Kiehm said this may have been a situation where a person has cognitive capacity but might have problems with volitional capacity, which is the ability to control one’s behavior and avoid committing wrong acts.
Pereira held a photo of his mother and father, which sat on the defense desk throughout the trial, during the judge’s recounting of the evidence and before rendering the verdict in the jury-waived trial.
After the verdict he smiled and kissed his grandchildren, children and wife and told them, “Family is everything.”
Pereira’s younger daughter, Autumn Pereira, said, “My dad was a very good man. He was a family man. Unfortunately, a lot of things happened. My dad knows he has to see through all of this. He was dealt a bad hand in life, and we will stand by him. We love my dad.”
Pereira was terminated June 17, 2016, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said. He was hired May 5, 2003, as an adult corrections officer at OCCC, where he has been held in custody.
Deputy Prosecutor Molly O’Neill said in closing arguments that typically when asserting extreme mental or emotional disturbance, it involves a quick reaction to an emotional disturbance.
But in Pereira’s case he lost control for a period of hours, had a significant cooling-off period from the initial shooting of his mother’s leg, then exercised self-control by his own testimony that he bandaged her up and returned to looking at photos.
He had self-control when unlocking the combination gun safe to gather firearms and ammunition on the evening of Thursday, June 9, 2016.
Pereira also used his phone to call his daughter and wife.
And he carefully fired a warning shot that whizzed just past the left side of Guzman’s head, O’Neill said.
The final gunshots to Barbara Pereira were through the eye, forehead and arm, not a “spraying of bullets” if he lost control, the deputy prosecutor said.
O’Neill said even if the court should find Pereira was under extreme mental and emotional disturbance, the court must ask itself whether there was a reasonable explanation.
She said Pereira said scary-looking photos on his mother’s phone appeared to show his wife was injured and his daughter’s face was cut off, and that his mother caused the injuries.
But he spoke to both his daughter and wife on June 9, and his mother visited twice that day, so it would be impossible for her to have inflicted injuries on his daughter, Autumn, who was in California.
O’Neill said there is no reasonable explanation for what Pereira did.
Kiehm said that on June 10, 2016, his client was under extreme mental or emotional disturbance, which is not to be confused with distress, anger or being upset.
He said Pereira experienced a loss of self-control due to a disruption, but there is no specific measure of time as to when a disruption occurs.
Pereira believed his mother had killed his wife and daughter, Kiehm said.
He said even Guzman said the photos looked scary, dark, possibly the woman’s face had blood on it, but said that to help calm Pereira, told him maybe the phone screen was cracked and it made the photos look that way.
Kiehm said Pereira’s wife, April, “was and will always be the love of his life,” despite having found out about April’s affairs, using multiple email accounts, looking for men on Craigslist and engaging in an affair with one of his co-workers since 2006.
He discovered that she wasn’t paying the mortgage, yet “he still loved her.”
Kiehm said, “Tony might have known they (his wife and daughter) were alive June 9, but a mental or emotional disturbance occurred.”
Pereira “believed his mother killed April and Autumn at the time,” “which caused a loss of self-control due to intense feelings,” he said.
