HONOLULU — In 2019, Sefo Fatai filed a lawsuit against the City of Honolulu and several officers of its police department, alleging wrongdoing concerning Mr. Fatai’s 2011 arrest and subsequent prosecution for drug crimes he steadfastly maintains he did not commit, and for which he was never convicted. Yesterday, Mr. Fatai’s lawsuit was dismissed, with all parties agreeing to a $2.1 million settlement.
In reaching this settlement agreement and putting the legal battles behind them, neither side in the long-contentious lawsuit yielded their fundamental positions, as reflected in a joint statement separately released by both the plaintiff and the defendants.
According to the lawsuit, Mr. Fatai, an auto mechanic, was sent to pick up money a woman owed his boss in August 2011. According to Fatai, what he did not know was that the woman in question had been arrested on drug charges a few days earlier, and was now setting up a phony drug-buy for the Honolulu Police Department in an attempt to avoid jail time. Fatai showed up to help a friend and, he has testified, this is where things went sideways, as Fatai became ensnared in a nightmare.
No trace of either the alleged drugs nor the money police had given the informant for those drugs was ever found on Mr. Fatai or in his vehicle, but he was nevertheless arrested and his car was seized. Over the next eight years, prosecutors would take Mr. Fatai to trial three separate times, each time failing to secure a conviction. Finally, in 2018, his case was dismissed with prejudice—meaning charges could not be refiled—and Mr. Fatai was released after spending over two years in jail. By that time, however, he was also penniless, and homeless.
Mr. Fatai filed his civil rights lawsuit in 2019, alleging multiple violations of his rights.
In 2023, federal Judge Derrick Watson issued a ruling rejecting the officer’s attempts to dismiss the case and setting up a trial. In that ruling, the court found that if Fatai’s account was believed, a jury could conclude that HPD officers violated his constitutional rights, including by fabricating evidence against him. After other legal wrangling, including an unsuccessful appeal by HPD officers, trial was set to proceed early this year.
According to Mr. Fatai’s attorneys, foregoing a public trial was an exceptionally difficult decision for him, as he has fought for justice for 14 years, and still steadfastly maintains that he was framed for a crime he did not commit. But he is grateful to have the legal battles behind him now.
“First, I want to thank those that have helped me get to this point, including Ken Lawson and Jennifer Brown of the Hawaii Innocence Project,” says Mr. Fatai. “They believed in me and offered help when seemingly no one else would. I have suffered so much and have struggled every day to put my life together, especially given the PTSD and depression I have battled as a result of these events. I want to thank my therapist and mental health team for their continued support through my lowest, darkest moments. I look forward to building a life, free from all of this, in the future.”
“This incident unraveled and reshaped Mr. Fatai’s entire life, in ways that are difficult to fathom. No amount of money can every fully compensate him for what he has endured,” says attorney David B. Owens of the civil rights law firm of Loevy + Loevy and the Civil Rights and Justice Clinic of the University of Washington School of Law.
“To me,” Owens continues, “Mr. Fatai is a hero. He survived and persevered though homelessness, jail-time, the loss of his beautiful family, and the stain of criminal accusation, to be able to stand here today and raise his head proudly as he moves forward from events that have dominated almost a decade-and-a half of his life.”
Mr. Fatai was represented by David B. Owens, of Loevy + Loevy and the University of Washington School of Law Civil Rights and Justice Clinic, and O’ahu attorney Jennifer Brown.
For a copy of the complaint in this case, click here.
