When he first sought to return to the city Prosecutor’s Office in the 2010 special election, Keith Kaneshiro touted his eight years holding the job previously, as well as his tenure as state Public Safety director.
"My administrative experience and background in crime fighting are unmatched by any other candidate," he wrote in response to a survey question for the Star-Advertiser voter guide.
At the very least, that administrative acumen can be called into question after a series of missteps at the office.
The most recent, for which Kaneshiro has appropriately accepted responsibility and apologized, was missing the window of opportunity to prosecute a 2012 case of third-degree negligent homicide, involving a truck driver and the death of 77-year-old Wallace Nakama of Ewa Beach.
But neither the city prosecutor’s mea culpa nor the office’s efforts to improve its computerized system of tracking cases constitute a full resolution of what clearly is an agency in need of an overhaul. Ultimately it will be voters who will choose the next prosecutor in 2016, but in the meantime the City Council should continue calling Kaneshiro to account, insisting on updates in the way the office operates.
The latest problems came to light Tuesday at a meeting of the Council’s Executive Matters and Legal Affairs Committee. The family of Nakama, who died a month after being struck by a truck while crossing a street, has expressed appreciation for Kaneshiro’s apology. But family members also expressed concerns about justice, and of recovering some $200,000 in Nakama’s hospital bills — thus the interest of the Council and taxpayers in the issue.
Prosecutors had decided to take the case about a year after Nakama’s death and to charge the truck driver with third-degree negligent homicide, a misdemeanor.
But when the case files were misplaced, the deputy prosecutor in charge lost track, with the result that the two-year statute of limitations on the prosecution expired. It may not be the biggest case of the year, but failure to get a verdict remains a miscarriage of justice for grieving relatives, who also face a more difficult path to success in a civil lawsuit.
The bungling was not limited to this case. The prosecutor acknowledged the discovery of 15 to 20 sex assault cases that were never filed; those files had languished until after the deputy assigned to them left the agency shortly after Kaneshiro took office.
The fact that the cases predated his tenure is not an adequate excuse. Kaneshiro said that installing electronic case-tracking system was a priority when he took office in October 2010, but that doesn’t explain why it took until December 2013 for the system to go live.
And blame for any problem with office management can’t be placed entirely on technology. Staying on top of what the office staff is doing is an essential function of an administrator. Questions should be asked about how priorities are being set, whether staffers are being overextended and how they are being held to account.
Finally, there’s a basic lack of transparency in the agency’s operations. The office has declined to provide any details about the deputy in charge of the Nakama case and whether disciplinary action was taken. This kind of shielding happens all too frequently in government — the police department comes to mind — to the detriment of the office performance and the public interest.
These failures are felt most keenly by the very real people whom they affect directly. The Nakamas, as well as the victims and families in those missed assault cases, are not going to have the justice that they deserve from their prosecutor.
When Kaneshiro sought re-election in 2012, he cited his work, "from addressing financial fraud against the elderly to making sure that victims of domestic violence do not fall through the cracks."
The prosecutor has taken hits over the past year, from the missteps of the tumultuous murder trials of federal agent Christopher Deedy, to current criticism for prosecution of the gambling case involving sweepstakes machines.
Kaneshiro will have to defend to the voters how those cases played out, but above all, will have to show he can run a tighter ship at the Prosecutor’s Office than is evident now.
