It looks like Michael Buntenbah is about to be saved by the bell and avoid trial on felony assault charges in state court because prosecutors have taken too long to get that case to trial. The charges in state court are separate from pending federal charges.

Buntenbah, 49, a former professional mixed martial arts fighter, is one of ten remaining co-defendants in the 22-count federal indictment focused on former Kamaaina Termite owner, Michael J. Miske, Jr., who is charged with controlling and directing a sprawling criminal conspiracy. Buntenbah is the only defendant not charged with being a part of the Miske conspiracy, but faces two counts of conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, and other controlled substances, and single count of assault in support of racketeering, crimes that were allegedly part of what prosecutors have called the Miske Enterprise.

The assault charge in the federal case is related to Mr. Buntenbah’s employment as a bouncer at Miske’s M Nightclub in downtown Honolulu’s Waterfront Plaza, formerly known as Restaurant Row.

“Buntenbah was identified on multiple occasions as the assailant in assaults which took place at the club,” prosecutors have alleged.

Although Miske racketeering trial is unlikely to begin before September 2022, Buntenbah is scheduled for a separate trial in state court during the first week of January on two counts of felony assault stemming from a January 2016 beating of two men at Miske’s nightclub. The Class C felonies each carry a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.

Trial in the state case has been postponed multiple times since the charges were filed in May 2017, and was finally rescheduled to a firm date to begin January 4, 2022.

However, Buntenbah’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Reiko Ann Bryant, filed a motion to dismiss the case on Friday, November 5, arguing the cumulative trial delays have exceeded the time allowed by court’s procedural rules.

Attached to Bryant’s motion is a November 3 letter from Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Lawrence Sousie, the latest in a string of prosecutors who have rotated in and out of the case.

“My review of the file leads me to believe there may be a Rule 48 issue,” Sousie wrote.

Rule 48 of the Hawaii Rules of Penal Procedure provides that charges should be dismissed if a case isn’t brought trial with six months. The rule allows certain periods of time to be excluded in computing the 6-month time limit, including delays requested by or consented to by the defendant or defendant’s counsel, delays caused by court congestion, or to allow prosecutors further time to obtain evidence. Cases can drag on for years as long as most of the delays fall within these exclusions.

Trial in the Buntenbah assault case had been rescheduled at least ten times over the more than four years since charges were filed. Failure to properly count the accumulating delays in an extended prosecutioin like this, especially with turnover of prosecutors handling the case, can lead to inadvertently exceeding the allowable 6-month period, which is what appears to have happened in this case.

No hearing date has been yet been set to consider the motion to dismiss.

Prosecutors allege Buntenbah, who was dressed as a bouncer or doorman at the time of the assault, intentionally or recklessly caused “substantial bodily injury” to Patrick Cullen and Chase Aki early in the morning of January 31, 2016.

The incident, allegedly involving Buntenbah and others believed to have been employed by the nightclub, was described in court documents filed in a civil lawsuit against the nightclub and its owner, Leverage, Inc., which federal prosecutors allege was controlled by Miske.

Buntenbah, while not admitting any wrongdoing, settled the civil lawsuit last year with a $30,000 payment by his State Farm Fire and Casualty Company.

According to the court record, Cullen and Aki were with a group of friends out celebrating on Pro Bowl weekend in a “going away” party for Cullen’s brother, Kaipo Cullen, who was preparing for a move to Seattle. The group started out at Sky Waikiki, where they split a bottle of Jack Daniels and a drank number of beers. After about three hours, they moved to Miske’s M Nightclub, arriving just after midnight, where the men reportedly had more to drink. As closing time approached, sometime around 3:30 am, Aki left to use the restroom.

As he emerged, Aki said was still adjusting his belt when he was blindsided, hit without warning and knocked to the ground, where he was pinned down, surrounded by bouncers wearing black, then kicked in the face, placed in a choke hold, hoisted to his feet while still in the choke hold, and walked out of the club, according to depositions filed in a related civil case.

“Then as soon as he let me go from the chokehold at the front door, I take two steps walking out, and then I got hit, and I got hit again from my left side.”

Aki identified Buntenbah as the person who threw the second punch, and then kept hitting him.

“We ended up falling by the bushes, and that’s when he jumped on me and kept hitting me,” Aki said in his deposition. “I was on my back, and he was on me like a full mount, and then he was just hitting me like that while I was covering.”

At some point, Pat Cullen, who had been waiting outside for his friends, started to go back into the club after being told Aki and Kaipo Cullen were were getting beat up.

Before he got to the door, Cullen was decked by a single punch that left him lying unconscious on the ground.

“And he landed straight flat on his back. And then his head bounced off the cement or off the ground, causing it to have a huge gash in his head,” Kaipo Cullen said later in a deposition.

Cullen said he had identified Buntenbah as the person who punched his brother from photographs shown to him by police.

Aki, after being walked out of the club in the choke hold, was also “in a bad state.”

“His face was messed up,” Kaipo Cullen said. “He couldn’t see through one eye. It was swollen. So I picked him up and I sat him down on one of those cement benches outside.”

In the confusion, Kaipo Cullen went looking for his brother.

“And I couldn’t find him,” Kaipo said in a deposition. “So I was like in a panic state. So I was, you know, trying to find everybody, where everybody is.”

“And then as I’m walking back towards Chase (Aki) I get hit in the back of my head out of nowhere…But the guy who had hit me kept on going…kept punching me in the head So he caught me off guard. I fell to the ground. And I was conscious but at the same time I was just getting punched left and right.”

“I fogged up. It was like a stun,” Kaipo said.

Police chased down and arrested David Pedro for assaulting Kaipo Cullen. In March 2018, more than two years after the incident, Pedro was charged with third degree assault, a misdemeanor. That case was also dismissed “with prejudice” the following year for exceeding the Rule 48 time limit.

Jason Yokoyama, a business partner in Miske’s nightclub, objected to the term “bouncers” to describe those providing security.

“We don’t call them bouncers. They’re doormen,” Yokoyama said in a deposition in the civil case. Yokoyama also denied Buntenbah and Pedro were employed by the nightclub, saying instead that they were simply guests on the premises that night.

Yokoyama was named in a second superseding indictment in July, and charged with being a member of Miske’s racketeering conspiracy. He is currently free on bond and under house arrest pending trial.

Buntenbah had been charged with third degree assault in an earlier 2013 case for allegedly attacking Frederick Williams, brother of NFL star lineman Trent Williams. In the highly publicized incident, Trent Williams was allegedly hit on the head with a champagne bottle wielded by Miske, who was also charged along with his half-brother, John Stancil. All charges were dropped when the Williams brothers declined to return to Hawaii to testify at trial.

Buntenbah was released from the Federal Detention Center on $500,000 bond in September 2020, pending trial, currently scheduled for March 2022, but likely to be delayed again until September. He is subject to house arrest and GPS monitoring, among other conditions, but was recently given permission to travel to the Big Island to work on a residence he owns in Pepeekeo.