HONOLULU (Court TV) — Jurors who convicted an anesthesiologist on charges he tried to kill his wife returned to court to face questions from the judge after their verdict was called into question.
Gerhardt Konig appears at a hearing on Sept. 11, 2026. (KITV)
Gerhardt Konig, 47, had been charged with second-degree attempted murder for assaulting his wife Arielle Konig while on a hike celebrating her birthday; the jury found him guilty of the lesser charge of attempted manslaughter based on extreme mental or emotional disturbance.
Konig testified at his trial, denying that he ever tried to hurt his wife and claiming that she was the one who attacked him and tried to push him off a cliff at the Pali Lookout in March 2025. Prosecutors said Konig was the one who tried to push his wife over the cliff’s edge that day, and said that when that failed, he then tried to inject her with syringes and beat her head with a large rock.
After his conviction, Konig’s defense filed a motion asking the court to overturn the jury’s verdict, claiming the panel did not unanimously believe that the defendant intended to kill his wife and also alleging that a juror used a phone to communicate during deliberations.
Judge Paul Wong ordered the jurors to return to court on Sept. 11 to answer questions about the issues raised by the defense’s motion. Both the prosecution and the defense opposed bringing the jurors in; Konig’s defense claimed their motion was substantive enough without the jurors needing to be questioned, while prosecutors said they believed that asking the jurors questions would violate rules protecting jury deliberations.
On Sept. 11, Wong said he would only ask the jurors questions about the alleged use of a phone to communicate during deliberations. The defense’s evidence of the banned electronic device was a comment on the livestream of the trial by Law&Crime, which owns Court TV. That comment came from someone with an image of Bart Simpson as a profile; the comment said, “I’ve been texting with one of the juror’s and they’re going for count 3 attempted manslaughter 😮.”
“The ‘misconduct’ that is alleged, that even tickles the court’s thoughts to conduct the inquiry, is this contact with a blogger regarding the verdict,” Wong said, explaining his rationale on the record. “It doesn’t talk about any of their decision-making. It is a rather limited inquiry based on what we have in the record.”
The court didn’t permit cameras to film the jurors; they each came in and answered “no” when Wong asked whether any were aware of a juror discussing the deliberations with an outsider while deliberations were ongoing, Courthouse News Service reported.
At the outset of the hearing, Wong said that three jurors were unable to attend — noting one was not on the island — and said those three would be called in for questioning separately on Sept. 18.
Konig has been held without bond in jail since his conviction; his sentencing was initially scheduled for August but has been delayed pending the outcome of his appeal.
