Did you notice the guest editorial by the city prosecutor’s office in yesterday’s Star-Advertiser? Headline: “The evil of domestic violence led to arrest of witness.”
Unfortunately, it did little or nothing to burnish the prosecutor’s public image following their arrest of a crime victim who was required to post $5,000 bail while the suspect awaiting trial remained free without bail. Perhaps I’m confused. Exactly who was the danger to society?
Dave Koga, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, wrote that the arrest was “unavoidable,” and that the prosecutor “had no choice.”
Why was it unavoidable? Because, Koga said, to allow the woman to decline to testify at the trial “is simply not acceptable to the prosecutor’s office.”
“Not acceptable to the boss” is quite different, in my view, from “no choice” or “unavoidable.”
Towards the end of the column, Koga then writes: “Victimization takes many forms….”
Yes, and one of those forms of victimization is being coerced and subjected to arrest by the people who are supposed to be on the side of the victims.
As Nancy Kriedman, CEO of the Domestic Violence Action Center, told the Star-Advertiser earlier, she opposes arresting victims in order to preserve their testimony.
“We don’t want victims to be re-victimized,” she told the newspaper.
It would certainly be interesting to hear more from Kriedman on the tension between a crime victim’s rights and the prosecutor’s interest in getting cases to court.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that Keith Kaneshiro considers domestic violence a high priority. But it isn’t the only priority, and it requires a level of sensitivity beyond the usual level of displayed in the legal bureaucracy.
It seems to me the prosecutor’s office needs to provide all the support possible to victims to encourage their cooperation in prosecuting offenders, coordinating where appropriate with private advocacy and support groups. The prosecutor needs to examine what went wrong in this case, and what might have been done differently to retain the victim’s voluntary participation. But, in the end, arresting the victim to preserve the prosecutor’s case sends the wrong message to future victims, discouraging them from calling for help from police and prosecutors.
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From the coverage it appears that despite being released the victim is out the money she had to pay to post a bond. Finding money from a victim’s assistance fund (or from public donations?) to reimburse her would be a start toward reconciliation. Her losing money on top of the humiliation and inconvenience is definitely rubbing salt into the wound ….
The prosecutor’s office is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to victims who recant or don’t want to testify. I saw a case where the victim testified in accordance with her testimony, then sat outside the courtroom hugging and kissing the defendant so the jurors would see her. Of course the defendant was found not guilty and jurors felt they wasted their time. If prosecutors don’t go ahead with the prosecution and the defendant ends up killing a girlfriend/wife later, the family would sue them.
The saddest case I ever heard was the one where the husband got off killing his wife because in all the other times he’d hurt her (over the years he’d broken most of the bones in her body), she didn’t die.
Victims need a strong arm to hold them up and fight for them. They must stop the abuser from committing more acts of violence. The life they save could be their own.
Jamming up the court with “junk” cases (recanting witness/no visible injury) doesn’t put a dent in domestic violence. And the public defenders love cutting their teeth on these jury trials. Just about any rookie public defender would smoke Kaneshiro in one of these misdemeanor cases that should be pled out. Let’s see if he could back up his talk — in trial.
http://thehawaiiindependent.com/story/koolauloa-politics-heat-up
I would like the prosecutor to look into this assault. Keith Kaneshiro, please look into this. This is not the first time this LCA Board member Junior Ah You has threatened people.
Junior Ah You works in government relations for the LCA? Sounds like a perfect job for a thug.
Where may I purchase said shirt?
“I was wearing my green ‘Keep the country country’ shirt and he told me to take it off. They [Envision Laie supporters] don’t like seeing those green shirts,” said Fonoimoana.
Thank you for this link. Verrryyy interesting.
what a mess. damned corrupt contemporary society and phuqued up local gummint.