Blue Hawaii: When Liberal States Get Tough on Crime

[KamaAina]

NYC public defender David Feige, writing in Slate, rakes us over the coals for our sheep-like assent to those four constitutional amendments back on Black Tuesday.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2110110/

Despite the campaigning of a distinctly un-Hawaiian Dick Cheney, Hawaii remained a solidly blue state this past election, voting for John Kerry 55-45 and returning its incumbent Democratic senator to the Senate by a 76-21 margin. At the same time, those same blue Hawaiians did something profoundly scary: They ratified each of four constitutional amendments pushed by prosecutors that relate to important criminal justice issues. And that is a trend that should be sounding alarm bells at ACLU offices across the country.

Ballot measures are nothing new, of course. In the last election, state voters were asked to weigh in on a total of 162 of them nationwide—from Alabama's constitutional amendment promoting shrimp and seafood (approved 63-37) to South Carolina's proposal to repeal the constitutional requirement that forced bars to pour drinks from minibottles (approved 59-41). But what was unusual about the Hawaiian proposals is that unlike most other states that occupied voters with bond issues, gay marriage, tort reform, or bear baiting, the Hawaiians moved criminal procedure decisively into the ballot-initiative arena: Every one of their four proposals involved criminal justice issues. More striking, three of these four amendments took direct aim at the Hawaii Supreme Court, seeking to reverse unpopular decisions not by redrafting legislation to comport with constitutional protections, but by eliminating the protections themselves.

Three earlier state supreme court rulings had set the stage for this unusual constitutional showdown. In one case, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that a defendant in a sexual abuse case should have been allowed to question his 13-year-old daughter about statements she made to her counselor recanting her story. In the second, the court ruled that sex offenders were entitled to hearings on whether their names and backgrounds should be made public. The third held that in order to be convicted of a "continuing course of conduct" in a sexual assault case, the jury had to agree—unanimously—not only that three separate acts had occurred, but also upon which three specific acts actually occurred.

Each of these cases involved a core constitutional principle: The confidential communications case involves the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses; the sex offender registration case involves due process since Hawaii's sex offender registration statute failed to provide the defendant with an opportunity to argue that he shouldn't be included in the registry; and the "course of conduct" case was grounded in due process and the unanimity of jury verdicts. The court's interpretation of each of these clauses was not wildly radical, but it sure was unpopular, and it spawned a strong prosecutorial backlash.

Not only did I vote against these amendments, I even voted for Carlisle's opponent because Carlisle has been pimping them, especially the direct filing one, for years. Had I known that Kaneshiro opposed prosecuting now-retired police officer Clyde Arakawa for a drunk driving fatality, I still would not have voted for Carlisle, leaving that part of the ballot blank as I did for my unopposed yet annoying city councilmember.

Reality check: Honolulu ranked third among large U.S. cities for its low crime rate. Why, then, are we behaving as though gangs of armed thugs are constantly accosting us on the way to Longs, and only stalwart Peter Carlisle can save our mortal hides?

[opihimoimoi]

1. Instead of being Astute, we are collectively Istute, without Stute. :o)

Stute, a little known, and rarely used term in Old Menehune near KipuKai Village, Kauai.


The Kupunas will come to save our People as they have over the past 6879 centuries.