I’ve got another report on the Mike Miske case this morning over at Civil Beat: “A Surprise Revelation In The Miske Case: A Plot To Kill A Union Official”

Here’s the back story.

Norman Akau, one of Mike Miske’s co-defendants, had a hearing last Wednesday to change his plea and enter a guilty plea as part of an agreement with prosecutors. There wasn’t much advance notice of the hearing, but I had been watching for it since Akau’s attorney had disclosed an agreement on a plea deal a week or more earlier.

The hearing was at an inconvenient time for me, as we were preparing to fly to Maui the following day for a week’s vacation. I set aside an hour for the hearing, but delays and technical problems in the court’s communications caused about a 20 minute delay. So it goes.

There is a set script for these hearings. The judge reviews the laws and administrative directives issued during the pandemic that still restrict in-person court sessions and instead rely on audio and video conferencing. The judge then asks the defendant if he consents to having the hearing in this manner, then confirms with the defendant’s attorney. Then the Assistant US Attorney takes the stage and walks through each provision in the plea agreement, which consist of the plea’s various sections, the charges, what would have to be proved in order gain a conviction in the absence of a plea agreement, potential sentences, waivers of rights, etc., and then works around to summarizing the defendant’s factual admissions that form the basis for the plea. In other words, the prosecutor recites what the defendant has admitted doing that violated the law described in the charges. Sometimes this recitation introduces information that hasn’t been made public before.

That happened in this case, as the AUSA described two murder-for-hire plots Akau was asked to join.

Then the judge takes over again, asking the defendant if anyone pressured him, or someone close to him, to enter into the agreement, or if there were any promises made, again to the defendant or others, that are not contained in the agreement as presented to the court.

And at some point, the judge asks the defendant if he agrees with the AUSA’s description of his crimes. Then he routinely asks the defendant to describe, in his own words, what he is pleading guilty to and why.

And this is where this particular hearing got very interesting.

The hard part here is that recording of these court sessions is strictly prohibited, and so you have to listen carefully at the same time you try to jot down enough notes to recreate what was said when the hearing is over.

And there were just a couple of bombshells dropped. I suspected that I was the only reporter listening in on the call, but couldn’t be sure. That night, Hawaii News Now ran as story based on a Zoom interview with Akau’s attorney in California. It didn’t catch several details that only came out in the hearing.

And, so far, the plea agreement itself remains sealed and unavailable to the public.

At that point, I desperately wanted to sit down and just write up the story, but I just didn’t have the time. It takes me a while to look up other details from my past research to add more depth to what was said at the hearing, and our Maui trip seemed to make that impossible.

But by Sunday morning, I had stewed about it for long enough, and the story was starting to write iteself in my head. So I sat down and, in a couple of hours, had it largely written, and in another hour or so had done two rounds of edits. It was ready to submit to Civil Beat, where it will have a larger audience.

Anyway, click through the link to read the story.