Judge Michael Seabright has rejected several “incomprehensible and nonsensical” documents filed on behalf of John Oliver, one of the defendants in the federal criminal case alleging fraud by a group Hawaiian sovereignty activists on Maui.
Court records show Seabright directed the court clerk to refuse to accept any documents that are not signed by the defendants in the case or attorneys representing them.
Seabright’s order appears in the court record.
The court has received several filings in this matter that were signed by neither an attorney of record nor a defendant. The filings are largely incomprehensible and nonsensical. For example, document 41 is titled, “Defendant John D. Oliver’s Reservation of Plea Pending Plaintiff’s Ratification of Indictment.”
This document was allegedly filed by defendant John D. Oliver’s unnamed “Authorized Agent.” The name of this “Authorized Agent” does not appear on the filing, and the signature is not legible. A similar document was filed with the court on June 21, 2011 by “the undersigned authorized Agent” for Mr. Oliver. The court assumes that these filings were not signed by any named defendant or retained or appointed counsel.
The court will only accept filings in this case signed by: 1) a named defendant’s retained or appointed counsel; or 2) a named defendant.
The clerk of court, however, is directed to refuse the filing of any documents not signed by either counsel or named defendant. If an attempt is made to file such documents in person, the clerk is to refuse the filing. If the documents are submitted by mail, they should simply be returned. Any questions as to whether a document should be filed may be directed to Judge Seabright. IT IS SO ORDERED. (JUDGE J. MICHAEL SEABRIGHT)(apg, )
(Entered: 06/21/2011)
The source of the disputed documents is unknown, but the defendants have previously been assisted by Eric Lighter, who has a reputation for filing long and often frivolous documents in court cases. Here’s one document that surfaced in an earlier civil lawsuit involving Mahealani Ventura-Oliver, also a defendant in the current criminal case. Lighter is currently awaiting trial on federal fraud charges in California.
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thanks Mr. Lind for your great reporting across a spectrum of venues
in contrast your coverage of the federal court— the SA has produced rather weak federal court pieces the last couple days
1) the federal public defender being questioned by a defendant trying to withdraw a plea (duh, defendants with sour grapes do that); and
2) the machete attacker who is highlighted as a decorated Korean war veteran (people are wondering if his age adds up to serving in that war) — regardless, the story should highlight the machete attack and its victim — not the highlights of the poor criminal’s resume
“Judge has rejected several “incomprehensible and nonsensical” documents” I do hope this is judge’s reaction on a frequent basis. Most everything lawyers write up and most everything uttered in court is incomprehensible and nonsensical.
Here are some musings on Senate Bill 1520, which recognizes Native Hawaii’s as the indigenous people of Hawaii.
http://kauaieclectic.blogspot.com/2011/07/musings-shafted.html
The blogger writes:
“The bill aims to do what Sen. Daniel Akaka could not: turn kanaka maoli into a tribe that forever relinquishes all claim to sovereignty while keeping those pesky upstart Hawaiians firmly under the state’s thumb. Worse, it does so by using a divide and conquer strategy that will serve only to tear the Hawaiians apart, which is quite an effective way to delay justice for another century or so.
“Specifically, the bill calls for the Guv to appoint a five-member Native Hawaiian commission — and who do you suppose might get those plum positions? — to determine just who is a kanaka and who is not for the purpose of creating a “roll.””
The essence of the blogger’s argument as I read it is that the sovereignty movement is being appropriated into the status quo.
Perhaps one response to this kind of argument is that one should expect this kind of appropriation. Perhaps co-optation is a hallmark of success. Also, perhaps it’s not a conspiracy, or at least the government’s intentions are not so consciously diabolical. From a practical point of view, there would eventually have to be a messy and in some ways hurtful formal process of sorting out who would and who would not be labeled a member of an indigenous group. Moreover, the current structures of power would monopolize the formulation of this process if only because they simply would not understand any process of doing this that did not originate within their own halls of power (this is a generous understanding of the motives of the government). The government is not going to say “Let’s have a big convention, everyone is invited, and you all can bounce around ideas about forming a new country and who gets to be a citizen!” Governments are not about spontaneity. They are bureaucracies that live in a bubble, and everything outside of it is babble and chaos to them.
Now, Ian, you have been writing about this sort of bizarre criminal fringe to the sovereignty movement. Making the generous assumptions about the noble nature of the government as I did above — hypothetically, remember! — in recognizing Hawaiians as indigenous, the existence of this fringe puts things in a new light.
One of the purposes of government is to deal with such a bizarre fringe, and confronting people with all sorts of rules and criteria for membership serves as a barrier to the fringe elements. This sort of process of ‘pasteurization’ is not necessarily anti-corruption, as we see with the Bishop Estate trustee controversy; that is, the elite can be just as corrupt as the fringe. No, what the government does is promote normalization, not morality (the status quo is not necessarily moral, that is why there are resistance movements).
The other thought that this realization stimulates is that in a certain extreme scenario where an indigenous sovereignty movement was unbelievably, totally successful — say, where they got all their land back plus compensation and they formed a government — the movement would probably become ultraconservative. The new government would turn against any kind of fringe and be very prudish. This would be very stifling culturally, like a return to the 1950s. (Here, I am thinking of something like the Cuban revolution, but also the Mormon church.)
So perhaps in Hawaii as the sovereignty movement becomes more mainstream via success, the cultural branch of the movement, so politicized as it is, will take on the aspects of conservatism. Just as Korean American and Jewish kids study their ancestors’ languages and take violin lessons and this structured environment serves as a path to Harvard and so forth, Native Hawaiian cultural activities may in the future come to serve personal advancement and cease to promote critical social awareness. There might be less of a weird fringe, but there might be a concomitant shift to a certain Punahou-ish conservatism and elitism that is admirable in some ways (disciplined and personally ambitious), but is sterile and uncritical.
Also, thanks Ian for having a forum where we are given things to think about and can share our own thoughts.