No. 30205, Friday, August 31, 2012, 9 a.m.

STATE OF HAWAI`I, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. MARYANN ACKER, Defendant-Appellant, and WILLIAM GERALD ACKER, Defendant.

Attorney(s) for Plaintiff-Appellee:Keith M. Kaneshiro, Prosecuting Attorney, and Brandon H. Ito, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney

Attorney(s) for Defendant-Appellant: Keith S. Shigetomi

COURT: Nakamura, CJ; Foley and Reifurth, JJ.

SPECIAL NOTE: The above argument will take place in the Supreme Court courtroom on the Second Floor of Ali`iolani Hale, 417 South King Street, Honolulu, Hawai`i.

[ Listen to the entire audio recording in mp3 format ]

Brief Description:

Defendant-Appellant Maryann Acker (Maryann) was charged with the murder of Lawrence R. Hasker (Hasker). After Maryann’s conviction for the murder of Hasker was vacated pursuant to her petition for post-conviction relief, she was retried and was again convicted of murder. A key witness for the prosecution was William Gerald Acker (William), Maryann’s husband at the time of the charged offense.

On appeal, Maryann argues that: (1) the trial court erred in ruling that she “opened the door” to the introduction of evidence concerning her conviction for murder in a separate incident; (2) the trial court erred in permitting evidence of Maryann’s involvement in three robberies unrelated to the offense for which she was on trial; (3) the trial court erred in failing to declare a mistrial in response to Timothy Millard’s testimony that the police asked him a lot of questions and to take a lie detector test and that he answered their questions to their liking; (4) the deputy prosecutor engaged in misconduct by cross-examining Maryann with information contained in her presentence report; (5) the deputy prosecutor engaged in misconduct by arguing in his rebuttal closing argument that William “didn’t ask for anything” and “didn’t get anything”; (6) the trial court erred in permitting William, without repercussion, to refuse to testify when recalled as a witness in the defense case; and (7) the trial court erred in instructing the jury that Maryann could be found guilty of murder as an accomplice or without the jury’s finding that she had shot Hasker, when the indictment alleged that Maryann had caused the death of Hasker by shooting him with a firearm.