An online petition to impeach embattled Honolulu Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro appears to have enough signatures to advance to the next stage, but the laws that apply to the initiative are so vague that the way forward is unclear.
If the petition is deemed to meet the requirements of the City Charter, city and court officials will be faced with the task of directing a process that has never been used before to determine the fate of a prosecutor under siege.
And they will be relying on laws that provide little guidance.
“It seems like some of this is uncharted territory,” said Tracy Yoshimura, a business consultant who started the petition and is seeking to have Kaneshiro removed from office.
Yoshimura posted the petition Tuesday on change.org after news broke that Kaneshiro received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice informing him that he is a target of a federal investigation on government corruption. Two of his top deputies, Chasid Sapolu and Janice Futa, also received letters linking them to the probe but not as targets.
By Friday afternoon more than 700 people had signed the Kaneshiro petition, according to the website.
The charter says the city’s top elected law enforcement officer can be impeached for “malfeasance, misfeasance or non-feasance,” though it doesn’t define those terms.
A petition signed by not fewer than 500 registered voters is required to start the process, and the charter gives the state court system jurisdiction over the proceedings. Once the petition is filed, “hearings shall be held on all such charges,” according to the charter.
But beyond that the city law is silent on how the process works.
And state law provides hardly any guidance. It only says the Circuit Court has jurisdiction over “actions for impeachment of county officers who are subject to impeachment.”
Nothing else about the process is outlined.
Rules for civil procedures would apply to impeachment cases, but even those don’t provide much clarity.
When asked to explain the process, the Judiciary declined comment. The city shed some light:
“The issue of impeachment of a city official has not been tested in recent years, and the last case involving an elected official happened under a previous version of the City Charter and state statutes that have since been amended,” it said in a statement. “There may be new interpretations under the current laws that need to be considered.”
The last time an impeachment petition was filed on Oahu was 16 years ago when voters attempted to remove then-Councilwoman Rene Mansho from office. Mansho pleaded guilty in 2002 to two counts of felony theft for stealing at least $20,000 in city money and more than $300 in campaign funds.
The impeachment effort was made moot when Mansho resigned from the Council that year.
The process was much clearer back then.
The charter specified that the Hawaii Supreme Court serve as an impeachment board to determine whether there were sufficient grounds to remove a prosecutor from office. The board had the power to appoint a master, who would investigate the allegations and report back to the panel, according to the charter.
If the board determined the prosecutor committed malfeasance, misfeasance or nonfeasance, the elected official would be removed from office.
That process, however, has since been changed, making it more vague. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser was unable to determine when and why the change was made.
“It has muddied up the waters,” said Peter Carlisle, a former prosecutor and mayor.
Keith Kiuchi, Yoshimura’s attorney, acknowledged that the way forward is ambiguous. “Nobody’s ever done it.”
But given the language of the current charter and state law, Kiuchi said he intends to file a “special proceedings” petition Tuesday in Circuit Court on behalf of Yoshimura. Special proceedings are civil cases that are not lawsuits.
Yoshimura will be named as petitioner and Kaneshiro as respondent, according to Kiuchi.
In special proceedings cases, a judge sets a hearing date, at which time the petitioner and respondent can call witnesses and present evidence to the court. The judge then makes a decision.
If the court indicates that a special proceeding is not the appropriate way to proceed, Kiuchi said he’ll make adjustments accordingly. “All I’m doing is making sure the petition has its day in court,” he said.
Whatever process is used, the city must determine that at least 500 registered voters signed the petition before the case can move forward.
Yoshimura wants Kaneshiro impeached for several reasons.
He said Kaneshiro has not acted appropriately after becoming ensnared in the federal investigation. Once Kaneshiro was named as a target, he should have
removed himself from the office, according to Yoshimura. And the deputies who were linked to the probe should have been placed on leave, he added.
Sapolu said Thursday that he was going on leave effective immediately.
Yoshimura also said he has been maliciously prosecuted by Kaneshiro.
A distributor of sweepstakes arcade machines, Yoshimura twice was indicted in gambling cases brought by Kaneshiro’s office. Both cases were dismissed by the courts.
In one a judge in 2014 cited prosecutorial misconduct in dismissing charges against Yoshimura and eight other defendants. The defendants eventually were re-indicted, but a judge in 2016 dismissed those charges with prejudice, meaning they could not be refiled.
Kaneshiro did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Long before Kaneshiro and his two deputies received their letters from the Justice Department, another deputy in the office, Katherine Kealoha, was indicted in 2017 as part of the federal investigation. She resigned in September.
Yoshimura also cited that case in his petition.
Supporters of the petition were critical of Kaneshiro.
“The city of Honolulu and the state of Hawaii deserve better than this from our top legal officials,” wrote Barbara Childress on change.org. “He should have the good sense to step down, but since he doesn’t, we must demand his removal.”
Said Deena Cates, “No one is above the law.”
