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“We’re going to trial!” was all defense attorneys were willing to say after an unusual sentencing hearing Thursday in which Chief U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway rejected the plea agreement in a federal human trafficking case.

Mike and Alec Sou, who run Aloun Farms, responded to the judge’s decision by withdrawing their guilty pleas on charges they forced 44 Thai immigrants to work as indentured servants on the Kapolei farm. Their other option would have been to plead guilty without a plea agreement.

Mollway characterized the brothers’ decision as “risky,” saying they may now face “very substantial” additional charges and stiffer sentencing if convicted. She called the situation a “morass.”

“I had concerns about whether the defense was really standing behind the guilty pleas,” Mollway explained leading up to her decision. “The situation has gotten muddled enough … I wouldn’t do this lightly.”

The plea agreement had entailed the possibility of a maximum of five years in prison, but community leaders had rallied behind the brothers in seeking a sentence that would have kept them out of prison and able to continue to run their farm, among Oahu’s largest vegetable farms.

While its rejection means the Sous face significantly heavier penalties, a lawyer for the Thai workers said they wish the case could have been closed today.

“From the perspective of my clients, who are the victims, it’s not a question of whether the Sous get prison for a year or 10 years or 40 years,” attorney Clare Hanusz said. “What’s important for my clients is for them to see that there is some degree of justice, some degree of validation of what happened to them.”

While the Sous had pleaded guilty to one human trafficking count, the way defense lawyers characterized the brothers’ role in the alleged conspiracy was markedly different than the way prosecutors described the charges.

“We admit that those workers were under duress,” said Eric Seitz, the defense attorney for Mike Sou. “We don’t deny that that happened. We just seek to characterize the specific role that our clients played.”

Seitz argued that workers’ living conditions described as “deplorable” had also become a “major bone of contention” in the case.

The defense attorney for Alec Sou, Howard Luke, argued his client has been “adamant about [his] culpability,” but was not as involved with the more “nefarious” components of the victims’ plight at Aloun Farms. He argued his client’s role in taking passports from farmworkers was merely to process payroll.

“It was not intended by my client to deprive them of liberty or freedom … enslaving them in the process,” Luke said.

Federal prosecutor Susan French objected to Luke’s argument: “That’s just a misstatement of the evidence that’s been submitted to the court.”

In describing the scope of the offenses form the prosecutors’ perspective, French also alluded to another pending human trafficking case. A federal grand jury last week indicted six people on human trafficking charges, alleging they — led by Global Horizons Manpower Inc. — placed 400 Thai workers into forced labor. FBI agents call it the biggest human trafficking case in U.S. history.

“This didn’t just start with the group of 44,” French said. “It was a sneak preview that may well be before the court in a separate case.”

“The theory has always been that the Sous learned their tricks from Global,” Hanusz said. “They learned how it worked and they could cut out the middle man.”

Judge Mollway says this marks only the second time in her 12-year career that she’s rejected a guilty plea agreement, calling it “a highly unusual situation, even for very experienced attorneys.” The other instance was a murder case.

Hanusz said if there’s any silver lining to the latest in a long line of delays in this case, it’s in the transparency that will accompany a trial.

“It does allow for all the evidence to come in,” Hanusz said. “When there’s a plea agreement, there’s so much that the public is not privvy to. But when there’s a trial, it’s all out in the open. If people had doubts, they won’t have any doubts after this trial. When they see the evidence, they’ll know that the government does not bring these cases lightly.”

FBI agents with knowledge of the case declined to talk because the trial is pending. The court set a trial date of Nov. 9. Pretrial is set for Oct. 12.