It’s now official: Petition is filed to impeach Keith Kaneshiro

It’s now official.

Honolulu businessman Tracy Yoshimura filed an impeachment petition against Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro in state Circuit Court on Tuesday. Yoshimura had been circulating the petition online since last week through the website change.org.

Judiciary spokeswoman Jan Kagehiro says the document is not officially filed until the assigned judge schedules the case for hearing.

Yoshimura’s lawyer Keith Kiuchi said the case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Jeffrey Crabtree. Kiuchi said he expects Crabtree’s first move will be to ask either the state Office of Elections or the city to certify the signatures on the petition.

The Revised Charter of the City and County of Honolulu requires petitions for impeachment of the prosecuting attorney to contain the signatures of not less than 500 duly registered voters of the city. The petition submitted Tuesday contains 861 names.

Kiuchi said because the petition was circulated online, the people signed the document electronically. He said whoever seeks to certify the signatures will have to work with change.org.

Once the signatures are certified, Kiuchi expects the impeachment process to take about 30 days.

“If the judge grants the petition for impeachment, he can remove Kaneshiro from the job,” he said.

But, he said, Yoshimura will agree to put the process on hold if Kaneshiro steps down.

Kaneshiro’s office declined to comment on the impeachment petition.

The city charter says that the prosecuting attorney can be impeached for malfeasance, misfeasance on nonfeasance in office and that state courts shall have jurisdiction over any removal proceedings charged on those grounds.

Yoshimura’s petition lists four reasons Kaneshiro should be impeached.

The first is for failing to take reasonable or necessary administrative action against former deputy Katherine Kealoha to protect the integrity of any or all past and present prosecutions she was involved in after it became known that the FBI was investigating her for potential criminal wrongdoing.

Following a nearly two-year investigation, a federal grand jury indicted Kealoha; her husband, retired Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha; and four former members of the Honolulu Police Department’s elite Criminal Intelligence Unit on charges that they conspired to frame Katherine Kealoha’s uncle for stealing the Kealohas’ mailbox and then lied about it to investigators. The Kealohas are also charged with bank fraud for allegedly lying on loan applications to secure mortgages on their home.

All six defendants are scheduled to stand trial in U.S. District Court in March on the charges relating to the mailbox. The Kealohas are scheduled to stand trial for bank fraud in June.

The second reason Yoshimura is seeking Kaneshiro’s impeachment is for failing to take appropriate action against First Deputy Prosecutor Chasid Sapolu after Sapolu received notification from federal prosecutors that he is the subject of a grand jury investigation. Sapolu removed that reason from consideration last week when he confirmed that he did receive a “subject letter,” that he intends to cooperate with the investigation and placed himself on leave.

The third and fourth reasons are for Kaneshiro’s failure to take action against supervising deputy Janice Futa after she too received a subject letter and for refusing to step down after he received a more serious “target letter” from federal prosecutors informing him that he is a target of a grand jury investigation.

Futa and Kaneshiro have declined to comment on whether they received subject and target letters. Yoshimura’s petition relies on media reports.

Prior to their indictment last year, Louis Kealoha and the police officers charged with him disclosed to the Honolulu Police Commission that they did receive target letters, though not all officers who received target letters were indicted. Kealoha also placed himself on leave before retiring under the terms of a $250,000 severance deal with the commission.

Yoshimura was the primary defendant in two state gambling grand jury indictments secured by Katherine Kealoha when she was still a deputy prosecutor. Yoshimura was the distributor of sweepstakes machines that Honolulu police and Kaneshiro’s office deemed were gambling devices and seized from arcades all over Oahu.

A state judge dismissed the first indictment after Katherine Kealoha admitted that she presented erroneous information to the grand jury that returned the indictment. Most of the charges were renewed in a second indictment, but that one was dismissed by another state judge because Kaneshiro’s office took too long to take the case to trial and failed to provide the court a reason why.

Yoshimura is seeking the return of the machines and is suing Kaneshiro, Katherine Kealoha and the city for malicious and retaliatory prosecution. His weren’t the only machines Honolulu police and Kaneshiro seized, but he and the owners and employees of the arcades from where his machines were seized were the only ones prosecuted for gambling. Yoshimura says that’s because he was the only one who tried to get back his machines.