Elders tried for role in TMT protest found not guilty

The first four of the 38 kupuna arrested for blocking Mauna Kea Access Road during the opening days of the Thirty Meter Telescope protest two years ago were found not guilty Friday.

In her verdict, Hilo District Judge Kanani Laubach said that not only was the access road closed, but prosecutors failed to present any evidence the trucks even had permits to travel up the mountain.

The ruling prompted members of the kupuna’s legal team to call on state Attorney General Clare Connors to drop the rest of the cases.

“One would only hope the government would reassess their case, read the writing on the wall and dismiss the other cases,” said Hayden Aluli, attorney for defendant Ranette Robinson, who was found not guilty Friday along with Marie Alohalani Brown, Maxine Kahaulelio and Kelii “Skippy” Ioane.

However, the state Attorney General’s Office indicated that its prosecution would continue.

“The court said its ruling is based solely on evidence presented at the trial of these four defendants,” the office said in a statement. “During the trials of related defendants, the State presented evidence that TMT obtained all necessary permits to move equipment up the mountain. It remains a crime to block a public highway, and the State will vigorously pursue the pending cases against the remaining defendants.”

The arrests occurred July 17, 2019, as the standoff between protesters and police came to a head during the initial week scheduled for construction of the long-planned TMT project.

A large group of kupuna, or Hawaiian elders, were sitting in rows of folding chairs across Mauna Kea Access Road, and one by one they surrendered to police, were taken away in vans and charged with petty misdemeanors. The action lasted for four hours, during which some of the arrestees made powerful public statements with the press looking on.

Among those arrested were veteran activists Walter Ritte and Mililani Trask, prominent kumu hula Pua­lani Kanahele and Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee Carmen Hulu Lindsey, now the board’s chairwoman.

In the end, no construction vehicles would pass the roadblock that day, and images of the arrested kupuna would galvanize support for the movement across the islands.

State attorneys would decide to prosecute the case in eight small groups, and the litigation dragged on for more than two years in part because of the coronavirus pandemic. Some trials have been completed, while others haven’t started yet.

During the trial of the first four kupuna, a state Department of Transportation engineer testified that he had not seen any permits for the wide-load trucks.

“It’s clear that the government did not take a sharp look at the evidence it had,” said Moani Crowell, Brown’s attorney. “Today’s verdict will have huge gravity and impact.”

Richard “Naiwi” Wurdeman, an attorney who represents several kupuna in the case, said state Attorney General Clare Connors has spent a substantial amount of resources and committed multiple deputy attorneys general to the cases.

“With today’s verdict, and in my opinion, Connors should be focusing on breaking down the walls of social injustice and racial inequities in Hawaii rather than creating deeper divisions. She can start by dismissing the remaining cases and calling for more dialog with those in the Hawaiian community on the social and cultural issues with which she and the Governor have disagreed and fought against,” Wurdeman said in an email.

Lindsey issued a statement Friday, describing the 2019 arrests and the subsequent legal trouble as “just another example of how Native Hawaiians have had to continually place their bodies and lives on the line, to protect that which serves as the foundation of our cultural identity and well-being.

“We look forward to the day when state decision makers understand and take seriously the cultural concerns and deep harms that are uniquely felt by Native Hawaiians, arising from government actions impacting the ‘aina and our deeply valued bio-cultural resources,” she said.