The Honolulu City Council has agreed to pay $2.1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a man who spent nearly three years in jail awaiting trial for drug trafficking charges — despite never having been found in possession of drugs or drug money.
Sefo Fatai, an auto mechanic, was arrested and charged with meth trafficking in 2011 after his boss sent him to a Pearl City Chuck E. Cheese to pick up money she said she was owed.
Instead of cash, the woman he met — who turned out to be a confidential informant working with police in an undercover drug purchase operation — tried to hand him a small bag of meth, Fatai told Civil Beat in 2019.
Police never found drugs or money on Fatai, but it still took almost eight years for the court to dismiss the charges in 2018.
By that point, Fatai’s life had been torn apart. He spent more than two years in jail when he couldn’t make bail, and he had to sell his auto mechanic tools to pay his legal fees. Unable to find a job, Fatai ended up homeless.
“The world just collapsed all of a sudden,” he told Civil Beat.
Fatai sued the city and several officers from HPD in 2019, accusing the department of a host of civil rights violations including wrongful arrest, illegal search and seizure and falsifying evidence.
The case was set to go to trial in January, but the attorneys reached an agreement to settle instead. Neither the city nor the police department has admitted any wrongdoing.
“All sides agree that it is time to move forward with this litigation in the rear-view mirror,” reads a joint press release from Fatai’s attorneys and the city.
