Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
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Senate President Richard S.H. Wong yesterday said legislation banning youngsters under 18 from playing the popular "space invaders" and other electronic video games is dead.
Wong, D-5th Dist. (Urban Oahu), said the bill died when the Senate decided to postpone yesterday’s scheduled floor vote on the measure.
Under an informal legislative agreement, Senate lawmakers had until yesterday to amend House bills and send them to a joint House-Senate conference committee where attempts would be made to reach compromises.
On Friday, Sen. D.G. "Andy" Anderson, R-3rd Dist. (Windward Oahu), was able to persuade his colleagues to rewrite a House bill repealing an existing law that makes it illegal for anyone under 18 to play or linger near pinball machines by extending the prohibition to include electronic video games.
Anderson argued that these games are contributing to the state’s truancy and juvenile delinquency problem.
The House bill was drafted to bring Hawaii’s laws in compliance with a 1980 state Supreme Court decision which struck down the state’s 35-year-old anti-pinball law as unconstitutional because it treated these machines differently from the video games.
Yesterday, Wong said the only measure now pending before the Senate is the House version without Anderson’s amendment.
Also killed by the Senate was a House bill that could reduce the prosecutor’s current burden of proving "beyond a reasonable doubt" that a defendant is legally sane. The bill would have required instead that the prosecution need only prove by "clear and convincing evidence" that a defendant is sane.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Big Island Democrat Dante Carpenter, maintained that this approach reduces the prosecution’s burden of proof, but does not conflict with the defendant’s right to due process of law.
However, the bill was returned to Carpenter’s committee without debate.
During a five-hour session yesterday, the Senate returned more than 105 measures to the House with amendments for possible House-Senate conference work.
