Eletise Leafa Vitale is the son of Women's Affairs Minister

Leafa Vitale Leafa Vitale was a Minister of Works and Minister of Women's Affairs in Samoa, who along with Toi Aukuso, former Minister of Post and Telecommunications, plotted the assassination of Samoan Minister of Public Works Luagalau Levaula Kamu in 1999. ...

, who, along with former Communications Minister

Toi Aukuso Toi Aukuso Cain (4 January 1959 – April 18, 2009) was a Samoan politician. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Faleata West constituency in 1979, and served for twenty years until his arrest. He served for a time as Minister of Post and ...

, conspired to assassinate the Prime Minister

Tuilaʻepa Saʻilele Malielegaoi Susuga Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Neioti Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi (born 14 February 1944) is a Samoan politician and economist who served as the sixth prime minister of Samoa from 1998 to 2021. Tuilaepa is Samoa's longest serving prime minister and ...

, the Chief Justice, the Minister of Justice, and New Zealand's High Commissioner to Samoa. On the night of 16 July 1999, during celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the ruling Human Rights Protection Party, he shot the Minister of Works

Luagalau Levaula Kamu Luagalau Levaula Kamu (died 16 July 1999) was a Samoan lawyer and Cabinet Minister. His 1999 assassination was the first political assassination in Samoa since independence in 1962. Kamu trained as a lawyer in New Zealand, at Victoria University ...

in the back. He pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to death by

hanging Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...

on 6 August 1999 by Justice Andrew Wilson. His death sentence was commuted to

life imprisonment Life imprisonment is any sentence (law), sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life impr ...

by the head of state. Vitale was granted parole in 2010, but rearrested for breach of parole in 2019.

References

Samoan prisoners sentenced to death Prisoners sentenced to death by Samoa Samoan people convicted of murder People convicted of murder by Samoa Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{Samoa-bio-stub