Hawaii House committee seeks details on lawmaker’s DUI arrest

A special House committee reviewing state Rep. Sharon Har’s conduct the night she was arrested on — and later acquitted of — drunken driving charges in 2021 on Wednesday asked for a written explanation of why she went out at night during the height of COVID-19 while on medication for a respiratory ailment and drank alcohol.

State Rep. Scot Matayo­shi, (D, Kaneohe-Maunawili- Kailua), also asked Har’s attorney, Howard Luke, to provide a written response to whether the lawmaker’s prescription medication included a warning about consuming alcohol.

Har, (D, Kapolei-Makakilo), did not attend Wednesday’s House Special Committee meeting chaired by House Majority Leader Della Au Belatti, (D, Moiliili-Makiki- Tantalus).

Belatti asked Luke to provide complete Honolulu Police Department body- camera footage of Har’s arrest on Feb. 22, 2021, along with her responses to Matayoshi’s questions by the end of the day Monday. Belatti also asked for the conditions of Har’s suspension of driving privileges.

Luke represented Har in her criminal case but did not represent her in separate license revocation proceedings, which could have required the installation of an interlock ignition system, a program Har helped create.

The committee is scheduled to reconvene either April 21 or April 22 to decide whether Har violated the House’s code of conduct, which requires members to “conduct themselves in a respectful manner befitting the office with which they as elected officials have been entrusted, respecting and complying with the law and acting at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity of the House.”

The code also requires that lawmakers not “lend the prestige of public office to advance the private interests of themselves or others; nor should members convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to unduly influence public business pending before them.”

Matayoshi told Luke that it was reported that Har had asked a police officer, “Do you know who I am?”

Luke said no such statement by Har was captured on body-cam footage and there were discrepancies in the various officers’ reports of her arrest.

The officer who reported the statement also variously said the officer originally detected a “slight odor of alcohol,” which was later amended to a “strong odor and then a very strong odor,” according to Luke.

The hearing was held after House Speaker Scott Saiki told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser at the start of the legislative session in January that the committee was unlikely to proceed.

Saiki said his decision to not pursue an investigation of Har was driven by a judge’s dismissal of her criminal case and her acquittal Jan. 10 after Luke cited a Dec. 10 Hawaii Supreme Court decision that criminal complaints are defective if they do not follow a procedural law requiring a signed affidavit or official declaration from the complaining party.

Har was arrested the night of Feb. 22, 2021, after leaving AnyPlace Cocktail Lounge. Officers found her alone in her 2019 Mercedes- Benz in the wrong direction of one-way traffic on South Beretania Street at Piikoi Street.

Har, an attorney, successfully fought for stricter drunken driving penalties, such as increasing the license revocation period to two years, up from one year, for drunken driving suspects who refuse to submit to a blood-alcohol test.

Her driver’s license was revoked for two years in March 2021.