Updated on January 26, 2023 9:19 am
Hawaii: Sentenced to 130 years in prison for rape and murder, he is acquitted
As the last of the three men still in prison for the murder of a 24-year-old young woman, Albert Schweitzer was released after 23 years in prison.
Albert “Ian” Schweitzer during the January 24 hearing that led to his release.
The Innocence Project
Applause and tears greeted Judge Peter Kubot’s Jan. 24 decision to immediately free Albert “Ian” Schweitzer from his chains. This Honolulu court acquitted a man who had served 23 years in prison for the 1991 rape and murder of 23-year-old Dana Ireland. The lawyers for the convicts had brought new evidence to court. “I’m just grateful, very grateful,” commented Albert Schweitzer, 51.
On Christmas Eve 1991, Dana Ireland was found barely alive in some bushes in Puna, a remote area on the Big Island of Hawaii. She was raped and beaten. She died shortly afterwards in hospital from a hemorrhage. The murder of this blonde girl with blue eyes will cause great emotion in the archipelago and put pressure on the police. The young woman’s bicycle was found a few kilometers from where she was found. It is badly damaged and appears to have been hit by a vehicle.
Dana Ireland was killed on Christmas Eve 1991.
judge for justice
It wasn’t until 1994 that the police thought of keeping a lane, CBS explains. A man accused of dealing cocaine says his half-brother Frank Pauline Jr knew about Dana Ireland’s murder. The person in question has been in prison for three months and has been sentenced to ten years on two counts, one of sexual assault and one of theft. Questioned seven times, he will denounce brothers Albert and Shawn Schweitzer, but multiply the inconsistencies. He will eventually join the trio of killers.
The three indigenous men were charged in 1997, although there was no evidence linking them to the murder. The charges will be dropped if the analysis of the semen found on the young woman does not match any of them. But when an inmate claims that Albert Schweitzer confronted him in prison about killing Dana Ireland, the trio face renewed charges.
Killed in prison in 2005
In 2000, Frank Pauline Jr. and Albert Schweitzer were sentenced, the first to two life sentences and the second to 130 years in prison. Shawn Schweitzer, who was 16 at the time of the crime, agrees to plead guilty to kidnapping and manslaughter. For this he was sentenced to only one year in prison and five years probation.
Frank Pauline later stated that he had denounced both the Schweitzer brothers and himself in order to drop the drug charges against his half-brother. When he wanted to say that everyone was innocent, nobody believed him anymore. In 2005, the day after the Innocence Project, which fights against miscarriage of justice, announced it would re-examine the DNA evidence found at the crime scene of Dana Ireland, Frank Pauline was murdered in prison.
In 2019, Schweitzer’s lawyers obtained the approval of the public prosecutor’s office to reconsider the case. In October 2022, Shawn recanted Schweitzer, saying he was innocent. He explains that he confessed at the time on the advice of his parents, who did not want the two brothers to end their lives in prison. He explains that he blames himself for making these false confessions and wrongly blaming his brother. In November, a lie detector says his retraction is true.
DNA mismatch
A re-examination of DNA found on a T-shirt covered in Dana Ireland’s blood, which had been discovered near her, shows that it does not belong to any of the three convicts. Schweitzer’s VW Beetle also left no tire tracks near where the young woman and her bicycle were found. In addition, a wound on Albert Schweitzer’s left breast that could be attributed to a bite that could have been caused by the young woman was not a bite, a dentist claimed.
All of these new facts prompted the judge to release Albert Schweitzer immediately. Now it has to be clarified who owns the DNA found at the crime scene.