A Pearl City man convicted of fatally stabbing his roommate and setting fire to the apartment they shared is headed back to trial after Hawaii's Intermediate Court of Appeals threw out his murder and arson convictions, ruling that the prosecutor's closing arguments crossed legal lines. Scott David DeAngelo, now 36 and working as a mechanic, was originally sentenced to life with the possibility of parole for second-degree murder and a concurrent 20 years for first-degree arson after a jury found he killed 33-year-old Demond Cox in February 2022. He remains held without bail at the Oahu Community Correctional Center while the case heads back to Circuit Judge Kevin Souza's courtroom.
According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the appellate panel of Clyde Wadsworth, Sonja McCullen and Kimberly Guidry found that Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Brian Vincent repeatedly used the phrase “we know” — 25 times across closing and rebuttal arguments — to assert facts that were not actually supported by the evidence. The court also flagged Vincent's use of “we don't know” at least once in a similar context. The judges wrote that the pervasive phrasing risked offering the jury the prosecutor's personal opinions dressed up as established fact, according to FindLaw's summary of the appellate ruling.
What Happened Inside the Burning Apartment
DeAngelo testified as the only defense witness at trial, telling jurors he stabbed Cox in self-defense after Cox allegedly set the apartment on fire and attacked him with a handgun, per the appellate record. He admitted to stabbing Cox in the neck and to setting the fire at the rented fourth-floor unit on Lehua Avenue, then jumped from the burning apartment's window and fled in Cox's car. Police arrested him the next day in Hauʻula, on Oahu's Windward side, in possession of a handgun.
Prosecutors told the jury that DeAngelo pulled the gun on Cox and tried to kill him with it before the stabbing — but the appeals court concluded that the evidence did not actually connect DeAngelo's gun possession to any inference that he tried to shoot Cox. Two witnesses reportedly saw DeAngelo with a gun, and the defense conceded he had one in his hand at several points, but the panel found the prosecutor's specific claim that he pulled it on Cox to kill him was not backed by proof at trial.
A Landlord-Tenant Dispute Turned Deadly
The case centered on a soured subletting arrangement. Cox had tried to end the arrangement with DeAngelo well in advance of the killing, and a message Cox sent his aunt on January 10, 2022, indicated he planned to give DeAngelo a target move-out date. Prosecutors argued that date should have been February 7, 2022 — the same day Cox died — but the appellate court found that specific claim improper as well, since it was not clearly established by the evidence presented at trial.
DeAngelo refused to leave the apartment and, according to the state's case, threatened the lives and property of others at the Lehua Avenue address. Cox had a friend and another visitor planning to arrive from California that same day, February 7, 2022, and stay with him — a visit that never happened after Cox was killed with a knife wound to the neck before the fire spread through the unit.
Presumption of Innocence Statement Draws Scrutiny
Beyond the “we know” pattern, the appellate court identified a separate, more serious misstep: during rebuttal, Vincent told the jury that “the presumption of innocence is gone.” Under criminal procedure, a defendant retains the presumption of innocence throughout trial until the jury actually reaches a verdict, and the appellate judges treated the misstatement as a distinct constitutional problem layered on top of the closing-argument issues.
The trial judge sustained a defense objection to a third improper statement from the prosecution, but the first two improper statements went uncorrected, with no curative instruction given to the jury at the time. The appeals panel weighed that gap heavily, noting that because DeAngelo and Cox were the only percipient witnesses present in the apartment, the state's case rested heavily on circumstantial evidence — a dynamic that gave unsupported factual assertions from the prosecutor outsized power to sway jurors.
Retrial Ordered, Not Dismissal
Despite siding with DeAngelo on the misconduct allegations, the appeals court rejected his defense team's request to bar reprosecution entirely. Citing the precedent set in *State v. Rogan*, the panel ruled that Vincent's conduct did not rise to the exceptional level required to prohibit a retrial outright — that standard applies only when misconduct intentionally provokes a mistrial or systematically deprives a defendant of a fair trial. The court did acknowledge that prosecutors have wide latitude in closing arguments generally, but found this case went beyond that latitude.
At the original 2024 sentencing, Judge Souza had called the crimes “horrific and heinous” before ordering DeAngelo's life and 20-year sentences to run concurrently. That judgment has now been vacated along with the conviction itself, and Souza is set to hold a hearing on September 11, 2026, to schedule a new trial date.
A Case With a History of Setting Precedent
This is not the first time DeAngelo's prosecution has shaped Hawaii law. Back in November 2022, the Hawaii Supreme Court used his case, *Deangelo v. Souza*, to establish that courts may hold a defendant without bail under Rule 12(g) while the state re-files charges following a procedural dismissal, according to FindLaw's record of that ruling. That fight arose because DeAngelo's original 2022 murder complaint had been dismissed without prejudice under the Hawaii Supreme Court's separate ruling in *State v. Obrero*, which invalidated felony complaints statewide and required prosecutors to seek grand jury indictments instead, as detailed by the Hawaii State Judiciary's memorandum opinion.
The state tried to keep the conviction intact, asking the Hawaii Supreme Court to review the appellate decision through a writ of certiorari on May 29, 2026. The state's highest court declined that request on July 6, 2026, per Justia Law's docket record, leaving the vacatur in place and clearing the way for the September scheduling hearing. DeAngelo will remain held without bail at the Oahu Community Correctional Center as the case moves toward a new trial.
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