I have another court update in the case of former Honolulu business owner and accused racketeering conspiracy leader Michael J. Miske, Jr. posted over at Civil Beat this morning (“Miske Case: Judge To Decide If Defense Attorney’s Removal Should Stand/Thomas Otake has been at least temporarily terminated over alleged conflicts of interest“).

It’s a confusing situation to try and sort out, with many levels of arguments going back and forth since mid-January over what the government has alleged are conflicts of interest on the part of Miske’s lead attorneys. One set of challenges to the two attorneys has been dismissed by Judge Derrick Watson, but another set of objections on different grounds involving two of Otake’s former clients remain to be resolved.

I’ve attempted to boil down the arguments, although it’s still a confusing back-and-forth between the two sides.

Much of this last challenge rests on Otake’s representation of two prior clients, who are not identified by name in court filings, and referred to only as “Client 1” and “Client 2.”

It wasn’t hard to fill in the name of Client 1, who was arrested and charged on drug charges along with two of Miske’s closest associates in mid-2018. But Client 2 was another story.

According to information disclosed in prosecutors’ legal filings, Otake represented Client 2 in an assault case in 2012, and again two years later when Client 2 was again charged with assault, this time in a family court case. Using the state judiciary’s online system, I first printed out all of Otake’s cases from those two years. Eyeballing the list, I came up with a couple of familiar names, but neither were involved in the kinds of assault cases described by prosecutors. So I had to go further, checking the dockets of each of the cases. This took a while, but eventually I found one of Otake’s clients who fit the profile. Just one person with two assault cases in the proper years. It was tricky, because the case title turned out to be in the name of a co-defendant “et al.”, meaning “and others.” And the other defendant in this case appears to be the Client 2 described by prosecutors.

It wasn’t a name that I immediately recognized as being associated with the case. But when I let my computer search through the mass of files I’ve collected on the case, this person’s name did appear in an FBI report of a 2019 interview with Wayne Miller, a longtime associate of Miske’s who has already pleaded guilty, is cooperating with prosecutors, and has emerged as one of the key witnesses against Miske and others.

A lot of my efforts to connect the dots like this are unsuccessful, so this was one of those pleasant “aha” moments when something just clicks into place.

In any case, do check out today’s CB story.