State of Hawai'I, Plaintiff-Appellee v. Timothy J. Culkin, Defendant-Appellant

Summary

The court vacated Culkin's reckless-manslaughter conviction and sentence because the jury instructions were inconsistent and misleading about whether self-defense applied to reckless manslaughter, creating a reasonable possibility of prejudice. It also held that the trial court erred by allowing impeachment questioning that foreseeably forced Culkin to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege before the jury and by excluding evidence of his brother's prior reckless use of a firearm, while rejecting Culkin's remaining challenges. The court affirmed the reckless-endangering conviction and remanded for a new trial on reckless manslaughter. Justice Acoba, joined by Justice Levinson, concurred in the result but urged trial courts to avoid juror questioning because of its risks to jury neutrality and adversarial fairness.