After correctional officer Steve Lo was shot to death in his garage last October, his affair with another man's wife became the business of the justice system investigating the killing.

But in the months since, elders in the Hmong community have asked this question: Could the death have been avoided with the intervention of traditional Hmong justice?

Lo's mistress had been married to sheriff's Deputy Chu Vue for 16 years. A month before the shooting, she filed for divorce.

Now Vue, who maintains his innocence, awaits trial on murder charges along with two of his brothers, with the affair cited by law enforcement as a potential motive.

For centuries Hmong clan leaders and village chiefs have brought troubled couples together in mediation, levying fines and extracting apologies along with promises to end affairs and return to spouses.

That tradition continues in California, where some Hmong couples in crisis still go to clan leaders to mediate disputes. Sometimes it works; sometimes the affair persists and the couples get divorces.

But traditional Hmong justice never was sought in the case of Deputy Chu Vue and Steve Lo, according to clan leaders, others familiar with the two Hmong families and Lo's widow, Sia Vang.

"All of this was never brought to the table," she said. "If it was, he wouldn't be dead today."

Hmong mediation on wane

There are 18 Hmong clans identified by their family names, including Vang, Vue, Lo and Ly. Not all Vues are related – in Sacramento, there are three distinct Vue sub-clans from different parts of Laos.

Any mediation would have had to start with Chu Vue and his clan leaders, said Hmong elders, who would have contacted clan leaders for Steve Lo and Chia Vue.

The clan leaders for the wronged spouse "go to his wife's clan and the boyfriend's clan for a three-way talk … and decide who started it," Pa Xiong Vue, a Hmong shaman and the leader of Chu Vue's clan, said through an interpreter.

"We would find exactly the starting point before a match turned into a grass fire."

Pa Xiong Vue has mediated at least 100 troubled marriages in Laos, Thailand and Sacramento. He noted that the more educated Hmong don't often rely on clan leaders anymore.

Chu Vue is the son of a shaman and speaks Hmong, said Pa Xiong Vue, 61. But his family came to the United States from the Laotian city of Luang Prabang much earlier than Pa Xiong Vue and are better educated than those who came later.

Professionals like Chu Vue and Steve Lo believe "I have a lawyer, I have money, I don't depend on elders any more," Pa Xiong Vue continued. "I was willing to help if they asked, but in this country there's nothing we can do if they don't."

Chu Vue, he said, never asked.

Dowry helped solidify vows

For thousands of years, the foundation of Hmong marriage has been the dowry, or bride price – a sort of insurance policy the groom pays his wife's family to guarantee the couple's success. It's also the foundation of marital mediation.

The dowry, negotiated by elders from each clan, is to ensure "you have to stay together and not cheat on each other," Pa Xiong Vue said.

"If the dowry is $6,000 and the wife cheats on the husband, she will have to pay $3,000 back and the other man will have to pay at least the other half to the wronged husband," Vue said.

Unlike Western marriage counseling, which is based on the philosophy that blaming goes nowhere, who starts the affair is key to Hmong justice.

If "the young lady starts the affair, she will be fined double," Vue said. If a married man initiates an affair with a married woman, "there would be a much heavier penalty – he would have to pay back the whole bride price because he violated it three ways: his wife, the other husband and the other wife."

Along with fines, the lovers also have to publicly apologize. "It makes them better people," Vue said.

If the other man doesn't agree to the clan leaders' ruling, the wronged husband has a right to seek justice himself, Vue said, including asking the lover to pay back the dowry.

Call The Bee's Stephen Magagnini, (916) 321-1072. Bee researchers Sheila A. Kern and Pete Basofin contributed to this story.