Myles Breiner is a former city deputy prosecutor from the days when Charles Marsland was Honolulu’s chief prosecutor, who now leads the charge for the rights of defendants — and by extension, he says, all of us — as president of the Hawaii Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (HACDL).

Breiner, 59, said he actually has the current chief city prosecutor, Keith Kaneshiro, to thank for his current career status as a criminal defense lawyer in private practice, since it was Kaneshiro who fired him from his city position back in 1989.

"He summarily fired me and 13 other prosecutors," Breiner said, "because … well, I never knew why he fired me."

Some legal wranglings ensued, but ultimately, Breiner said, "the irony is that I should thank Mr. Kaneshiro. … He ended up doing me quite a favor because I discovered that I really had a passion for criminal defense. I sincerely believe that we protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I see us as the sword and shield for our clients. We protect them; at the same time we’re their advocates. And I fully embrace that. It’s not a bunch of shibai."

His passion for his work at one time apparently went a little too far; in 1999 the state Supreme Court suspended him from practicing law for six months due to behavior during one trial that was deemed "stubborn, argumentative, sarcastic and disrespectful."

Back in good graces since then, Breiner, as head of the 250-member HACDL, these days often weighs in on issues pertaining to Hawaii’s criminal justice system, such as body-cams for the police, whether crime victims should be allowed to testify via video conferencing, and, in general, "anything impacting on the rights of defendants."

Breiner has a law degree from the University of San Francisco and both a master’s degree in Chinese economic history and a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from the University of Michigan, which he attended after graduating from Lasher High School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

Before going to law school, Breiner had worked as a speech writer for U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, of New York, then for a year in Beijing for the National Council for U.S.-China Trade. After law school, he worked for the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in California, then was recruited by Marsland in Honolulu.

Breiner and his wife, Fon, have two sons — identical twin boys age 3 1/2. They live in Kailua.

Question: Could you tell me a little bit about the Hawaii Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers?

Answer: HACDL is an affiliate of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. It represents private defense attorneys throughout the state, and we’ve been around … I would say at least 30-plus years. We have monthly meetings. We participate in various committees that affect legislation. … I go and testify as often as I can, or other members of the board of HACDL participate.

We actually have two different entities that participate on the defense side: The Public Defenders Office participates in testifying before the Legislature and before the City Council regarding changes in ordinances and laws, … and HACDL does the same thing.

HACDL is kind of a loose organization. The fact is it reflects the composition of our defense bar. They’re mostly solo practitioners, and because they’re on their own, most of them have fairly small practices — usually just themselves and maybe a secretary; they find it very difficult to participate on a broader basis. So the Public Defenders Office picks up a lot of that slack. They participate routinely in testifying before the Legislature. I do it on an ad hoc basis. I’ll get contacted, for example, by the Community Alliance on Prisons — you know, Kat Brady and that group; or I will get contacted by someone from The Innocence Project, from the University of Hawaii law school, or the Public Defenders Office about upcoming legislation, and I usually will review and then go testify regarding our position.

Q: How big of a group is the Public Defenders Office?

A: The state Public Defenders Office has, I think, close to 130 or 140 attorneys. They’re assigned to all the islands, to both District Court and Circuit Court.

Q: They’re on the public payroll?

A: Correct. And, frankly, they’re overworked and underpaid. It takes a lot of commitment to be a public defender because it’s a very stressful job. … To be a public defender you have to be very dedicated because it’s a thankless task. You have a terrible caseload. …. We have a large, large number of citizens in the state of Hawaii who simply cannot afford private counsel. So the lion’s share of defense work in Hawaii is covered by the Public Defenders Office, and they do a fantastic job.

Q: And the reason people are able to access a defense attorney for free is because it’s a constitutional requirement?

A: Exactly. The right to counsel is absolute. Every state has to provide it. But there’s always a problem because the Public Defenders Office is overworked and underfunded. It’s so bad that across the country, some public defenders’ offices — like I’m thinking Dade County in Florida — they were taken to federal court because they refused to take any new cases because they simply weren’t getting funded. They had employees, senior public defenders, who had hundreds of cases, and simply could not handle the caseload.

Q: What’s the situation like in Hawaii?

A: It’s increasingly difficult every year.

Q: What are some of HACDL’s legislative priorities right now?

A: Well, late last year there was the matter regarding prostitution, where the police wanted to legalize their engaging in sexual relations with prostitutes in order to enforce the law. I very strenuously argued against that before the Legislature. …

Another example would be the medical marijuana initiative. We support the creating of dispensaries, that they should be properly regulated.

Recently there’s been committee meetings regarding the changes to jury instructions. … Anything impacting on the rights of defendants, we participate in. If it’s any change in the laws that law enforcement here is seeking — in particular, the prosecutors office in Honolulu or the attorney general’s office — if they’re seeking to create a new law criminalizing behavior, we usually argue against it, or we try to minimize the impact of some of those changes.

For example, we object to mandatory sentencing. Mandatory sentencing, especially in drug cases, has proven to be completely, utterly ineffective. It has not had any impact on the reduction of drug-related behavior, whether it’s drug-related crime, or on criminal behavior in general. It simply has not had any effect. The war on drugs is a giant waste of public funds.

Q: Were you surprised to learn from the news this month about how the collection of metadata by the NSA was preceded for decades by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department?

A: I wasn’t. I was surprised at the extent of it, how pervasive it’s been. You know, under the guise of narco-terrorism, we’ve watched our civil liberties fully chipped away.

Q: Do you know of any attorneys in Hawaii who have tried to access that secret metadata to try to prove that their clients were innocent?

A: Not directly. I think there are folks at the law school and the Innocence Project who are looking into it.

Q: In the interests of tamping crime against tourists, a lot of folks were supporting a bill that would allow people who have been victimized while visiting here to testify against their alleged perpetrators via video conferencing, but the association opposed that, right?

A: Yes.

Q: Why was that?

A: We opposed it because … we have an adversarial system of justice, and what that means is that under the Sixth Amendment you have a right to confront your accuser. That means being able to look your accuser in the face, being able to cross-examine them, or the opportunity to cross-examine them, and for the jury to see how they respond. So if you allow for video trial, you eliminate the jury’s ability to watch and look at the person’s response to a question.

Q: Even if the technology …

A: I don’t care if it’s high-definition and it’s on a 20-foot screen, there’s something about a human being watching another person respond to a question. In fact, every trial I have, I ask the jury, among other questions when I’m picking the jury, "What criteria do you use for judging someone’s truthfulness? How do you know when someone is telling you a lie or the truth?" And everyone talks about their intuition. They talk about body language, expressions, eye contact, hand gestures, pattern of speech. And I firmly believe that digitally videoing it is not going to achieve what the Founding Fathers originally imagined as the right to confrontation.

Q: Well, what can we do about criminals preying on tourists who aren’t here to testify?

A: It’s interesting because it’s an economic issue. But between an economic issue versus the Constitution, I favor the Constitution.

It’s sort of ironic. People with criminal records don’t vote; they can’t vote. They lose their right to vote. So they’re an easy target for politicians to reduce their legal rights, to pass legislation that makes it sound like they’re favoring the victims of these crimes. But ultimately everyone’s a victim if we lose our fundamental right to trial, the fundamental right to a jury trial, the fundamental right to confront witnesses, the fundamental right to remain silent.

Why do you think every time you start a trial, the jury is told the defendant has a right to remain silent, the defendant has a right not to put on any witnesses, and the burden is on the prosecution? The people have to be told this repeatedly because they assume that if you’re charged with an offense, you must be guilty of it.

Q: Would you favor restoring the rights of felons to vote?

A: Yes, absolutely.

Q: What about body-cams for police?

A: I absolutely support that. Take the most recent one in the news, the shooting that occurred in South Carolina. … When the officer filed his initial report, the chief of police took the officer’s position until an innocent party, who witnessed it and videotaped it, turned the videotape over. So but for that videotape showing that officer shooting him over and over again, as he ran away, it would have been a staged crime scene.

I average about three to six cases against HPD (the Honolulu Police Department) per year. For example, I have one pending now, the case involving the crime-reduction unit officer Vince Moore, who walked into the game room, and but for their having surveillance cameras that caught it, this officer went in there and beat the daylights out of two guys for no reason. Clearly. He kicked one guy in the face and punched another guy in the face and threw a chair at one guy. My client, the one who got hit with the chair, ended up with a half-dozen staples in his head.

Q: Have you determined whether there’s support from HPD … for body-cams?

A: They’re between a rock and a hard place. Officers do not want to have video cameras on their bodies, period. And they don’t want to have them in their cars, and they don’t want to be videotaped because they do lots of questionable things. So it’s going to be interesting to see how they react, you know, to having the body-cams. Because it’s coming. It’s coming. The public is demanding accountability. And that’s what this is all about.

The sad part is that HPD and any police agency stands to benefit from greater accountability. It will reduce the number of lawsuits filed by people like me. They will reduce the number of complaints filed with the Professional Standards Office, which used to be Internal Affairs.

I think everyone, the police in particular, will benefit by having the videotapes because it will increase their professionalism, because they will know they’re being videoed. It also will cause members of the public who come in contact with the police to maybe conduct themselves better, because they would know they’re being videotaped. And it certainly will reduce the number of complaints so that you have only really legitimate cases being filed.

Q: What do you think about the state of criminal justice in Hawaii overall? Is it tilted toward prosecutors?

A: Yes. There are far too many prosecutors on the bench who have a jaundiced view of defendants’ rights. … I believe there should be greater accountability of prosecutors and how they conduct themselves.

Q: If we’re so tough on crime, how does it happen that we read so often about a person being charged with a crime and he’s already got dozens or even scores of convictions on his record? How does that happen?

A: It happens occasionally, but actually it doesn’t happen as often as the prosecutors suggest.

Q: I’m just going by what I read in the paper. (Laughter)

A: Hey, hey, hey … Don’t start me on that. But it’s not as common as you think. (Laughter)