Hawaii Supreme Court grants new trial in Maui man's 1990 rape conviction

The Hawaii Supreme Court found testimony in the trial inadmissible in light of new forensic science standards for hair and fiber evidence.

by Carly Nairn, Court House News, July 16, 2026

The Hawaii Supreme Court vacated a 36-year-old rape conviction, after an expert opinion on fiber and hair evidence in the case was deemed erroneous.

In 1990, a jury convicted Daniel Granillo of kidnapping, attempted sexual assault and two counts of sexual assault of an unnamed woman and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

“The prosecution used hair and fiber evidence to convict a man,” Associate Justice Todd Eddins wrote in the court’s 91-page opinion published Wednesday. “Because science has since proven that evidence false, his right to a fair trial was violated.”

By the court’s ruling, Granillo will receive a new trial.

FBI Special Agent Wayne Oakes told jurors in 1990 that hair found in Granillo’s car had been torn out at the roots and belonged to the victim, and that fibers from her clothing matched his car’s seat cover and carpeting.

The jury convicted Granillo of kidnapping, two counts of first-degree sexual assault, and attempted first-degree sexual assault stemming from a violent May 1989 attack on a woman in a Maui shopping center parking lot.

But in October 2017, federal authorities notified Maui prosecutors that Oakes’ hair comparison testimony was “inappropriate” and overstated what microscopic hair analysis could scientifically prove. The notification came amid revelations of widespread problems in FBI crime labs during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when analysts routinely exaggerated the reliability of hair comparison evidence.

In 2019, Granillo filed a petition for a hearing about the validity of the evidence. His attorney argued the trial court erred in admitting Oakes’ opinion testimony, saying the evidence should be deemed inadmissible and asked the court to take judicial notice of a 2009 National Research Council report on forensic science that said fiber and hair analysis lacked scientific rigor and was often overstated in testimony.

“If scientific advancements reveal the unreliability of forensic evidence used to convict, then the evidence the jury heard was untrue — not new,” Eddins wrote. “No prosecutor, no defense lawyer, no judge could have known what the 2009 NRC Report would later reveal. Granted — no one could have known. Granillo is not less wrongly convicted because everyone in 1990 acted in good faith. He sits in prison on testimony the science no longer supports.”

After Granillo filed his petition, a lower court ruled Oakes’ testimony was “beyond the bounds of science,” but that revelation didn’t necessarily call for a new trial, as it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and did not contribute to the jury’s verdict.

The Hawaii Supreme Court disagreed with the lower court’s use of harmless beyond a reasonable doubt as the legal standard in which to assess the errors. Instead, materiality was a better standard to apply, Eddins said.

“Harmless beyond a reasonable doubt asks how strong the state’s other evidence looks once the constitutional error is set aside. Could the conviction stand without the tainted testimony?” he wrote. “If yes, the error is harmless. The inquiry centers on the strength of what remains. Materiality asks a different question. Could the false testimony have affected the jury’s judgment? The focus is not on what remains in the state’s case. It is on what the false evidence may have done to the verdict the jury actually returned.”

The case is one part of national reckoning with outdated forensic science. Pattern-matching disciplines like microscopic hair and fiber comparison, once presented to juries as near-certain proof, are now understood to lack the statistical foundations courts once attributed to them.

The FBI’s acknowledgment in 2015 that its analysts committed “widespread, systematic error” has prompted reviews of thousands of convictions.

The victim in the case reported that Granillo struck her in the parking lot, dragged her into his car, drove her to a beach, held her at knifepoint and repeatedly sexually assaulted and beat her before she escaped. The brutality of the attack resulted in Granillo receiving two consecutive 20-year sentences.

A Hawaii Supreme Court panel heard oral arguments on the case in January. The panel consisted of Acting Chief Justice Sabrina McKenna, Associate Justices Todd Eddins, Lisa Ginoza and Vladimir Devens, along with Third Circuit Judge Peter Kubota sitting by assignment due to a vacancy.

An attorney representing Granillo and Hawaii’s Prosecuting Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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BACKGROUND: 34 years Later: Will State Supreme Court let Rapist Weasel Out?