Effort to impeach Honolulu city prosecutor pushed to March

A decision on whether Honolulu Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro should be impeached has been put off for at least one more month — and likely longer.

Attorneys for Kaneshiro and Honolulu businessman Tracy Yoshimura, who is leading the petition, agreed at Thursday’s status conference hearing to appear March 11 before state Circuit Judge Jeffrey Crabtree for yet another status hearing.

The parties are hopeful that several key side issues will be resolved by then.

Calls for Kaneshiro’s suspension because he is the target of a federal criminal investigation reached a new level this week when Attorney General Clare Connors filed a separate request to the Hawaii Supreme Court calling for the prosecutor to be removed temporarily.

Kaneshiro did not appear at Thursday’s status conference hearing, but his attorney William McCorriston argued that Kaneshiro had not been properly served with the petition.

Keith Kiuchi, Yoshimura’s attorney, said documents show the petition was served Dec. 27 to the receptionist in the prosecutor’s office.

Crabtree told them they should try to settle the service issue on their own.

Meanwhile, McCorriston is hoping that the Honolulu City Council will approve Kaneshiro’s request to use taxpayer dollars to pay for him to represent Kaneshiro.

The Council had been scheduled to vote Wednesday on Resolution 19-22, which would provide $75,000 to hire McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon to represent Kaneshiro in Yoshimura’s impeachment case.

But Council members instead decided to delay the vote until at least next month, noting that Connors’ petition to the Supreme Court could make Yoshimura’s impeachment effort moot.

It’s unclear when the high court will decide whether it will consider Connors’ request.

McCorriston also said he had sent a memo to Connors asking that an independent special counsel be appointed to “investigate and/or prosecute, if warranted,” Yoshimura for making “demonstrably false” statements in his petition. Specifically, McCorriston cited the assertion that Deputy Prosecutor Janice Futa had received a subject letter tied to the federal investigation.

McCorriston, in his filing, included a declaration by Futa stating she had not received either a target letter or subject letter from federal attorneys.

“One might argue that people relied on false statements in the petition when they signed the petition and that may be another reason to invalidate the petition,” he said.

In the memo, McCorriston noted Connors’ own petition “creates an inherent conflict of interest for you and your office to investigate this matter.”

Kiuchi defended his petition, saying, “There’s not a false statement in there.”

But he and Yoshimura acknowledged that their petition’s assertion about Futa came from media reports.

“The constant refusal by the prosecutor’s office to step up and make a statement to clarify the status of Mr. Kaneshiro himself, as well as his staff members, are reasons for these type of issues coming up,” Yoshimura said.

Despite media reports, citing anonymous sources, that Kaneshiro had received a target letter, neither the prosecutor nor any representative had responded to reporters’ queries on the issue. That changed Tuesday when Connors’ filed her petition for extraordinary writ and McCorriston confirmed Kaneshiro’s receipt of a target letter.

Kiuchi and Yoshimura said they’ve asked the city for clarification on the requirements for an impeachment proceeding, including how names on the petition are certified. Yoshimura told reporters after Thursday’s hearing that the questions are relevant because his petition is believed to be the first impeachment action using electronic means to gather names.

So far, Kiuchi has only received two short responses from Deputy Corporation Counsel Moana Yost that said City Clerk Glen Takahashi would not be responding to him and Yoshimura, “but will await instruction from the Court, if any.”

Yoshimura said that out of an abundance of caution, he began soliciting physical signatures as part of a new petition effort. So far, he and other volunteers have received about 100 signatures in two days. The online change.org petition contained 973 as of late Thursday.