The Hawaii doctor charged with trying to kill his wife throughout an Oahu birthday hike final yr was convicted Wednesday of attempted manslaughter primarily based upon excessive psychological or emotional disturbance.
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The unanimous verdict got here after the Honolulu County jury deliberated for greater than eight hours. It didn’t convict Dr. Gerhardt Konig on the upper cost of second-degree attempted homicide.
Konig closed his eyes and bowed his head when the decision was learn. When he sat down, he lined his face along with his hand and his lawyer put a consoling arm on his shoulder.
He faces up to 20 years in jail when he is sentenced on Aug. 13.
The conviction caps a roughly three-week trial throughout which Konig and Arielle Konig provided sharply contrasting accounts of the occasions of March 24, 2025 — her birthday.
After the decision outdoors the courtroom, the doctor’s protection lawyer mentioned, “we look forward to appealing.”
“We are thankful that they did not convict him of attempted murder, which would have been life in prison,” Thomas Otake mentioned, thanking the jury.
In his closing argument, prosecutor Joel Garner mentioned Gerhardt Konig was “obsessed” along with his wife’s emotional affair with a co-worker when he tried to shove her from a cliff on the Pali Puka Trail, northeast of Honolulu.
When that failed, Garner mentioned, he tried to stab her with a syringe and bashed her head with a rock. The alleged assault ended when two hikers came across the scene, he mentioned.
“The only thing that got him to stop was being caught red-handed,” Garner mentioned.
Gerhardt Konig’s lawyer, Thomas Otake, described the allegations as “she said, he said” and a “theory in search of facts.” On the stand, Gerhardt Konig denied trying to push Arielle Konig or inject her with a syringe and mentioned he acted in self-defense, placing her with a rock after she tried to push him from the path.
“He had a reflex,” Otake mentioned in his closing argument. “He reacted, and then he felt horrible about it.”
The alleged assault occurred three months after Gerhardt Konig found his wife had been having the emotional affair. They’d gone to counseling, Arielle Konig testified, and appeared to be mending the harm she mentioned she’d brought about to their relationship.
Gerhardt Konig testified that he was “devastated” by the affair. He accused his wife of minimizing the breach and refusing to take accountability for it.
The husband and wife, who married in 2018, every testified about what occurred in the course of the hike.
Arielle Konig mentioned the incident occurred after her husband requested her to pose for a cliffside selfie. She turned nervous in regards to the photograph’s location, she mentioned, and when she tried to transfer previous him, he grabbed her by the arm and pushed her again.
A battle ensued, Arielle Konig mentioned, and her husband — an anesthesiologist — got here at her with a syringe and advised her to maintain nonetheless.
She batted it away, she mentioned, and after he briefly appeared to settle down, he started bashing her head with a rock.
“‘Nobody’s going to hear you out here,’” she recalled him saying. “‘Nobody’s coming to save you.’”
Other hikers on the path known as 911 and mentioned they noticed a person trying to kill a lady, in accordance to audio of the decision introduced in courtroom. Police physique digital camera video performed in the course of the proceedings confirmed the ladies aiding Arielle Konig, whose face was lined in blood.
An emergency doctor who tended to Arielle Konig testified that she sustained a cranium laceration that reached the bone. Pieces of rock had been embedded within the wound, he mentioned.
The defendant took the stand for 2 days, telling the jury that the altercation occurred after he and his wife had an argument in regards to the co-worker with whom she had the affair.
Arielle Konig tried to push him from the cliff, Gerhardt Konig mentioned. She pulled him to the bottom, grabbing his testicles and placing him exhausting within the face with a rock, he testified.
Gerhardt Konig mentioned he wrestled the rock away from his wife and hit her with it twice.
A pathologist who testified for the protection described Arielle Konig’s wound as a “soft-tissue injury” that didn’t trigger a bone fracture or bleeding across the mind. “This is not a life-threatening injury,” mentioned the pathologist, Dr. Jonathan Arden.
Gerhardt Konig denied trying to inject her with a syringe and mentioned that whereas he felt horrible about what he did, he’d acted in self-defense.
Afterward, he called his son and mentioned he deliberate to take his personal life. During the decision, Emile Konig testified, his father advised him that his wife was dishonest on him and that he’d tried to kill her.
Gerhardt Konig disputed half of that declare in his testimony, saying the phrase “kill” might have been used however that he did not imply it as a confession.
Gerhardt Konig was arrested practically eight hours later, Garner mentioned, after authorities launched a manhunt. Gerhardt Konig testified that he determined to flip himself in.
