My post earlier this week reporting Judge Derrick Watson’s order granting a motion by Mike Miske’s defense attorneys for a judgment of acquittal on two motions, and Madeleine Valera’s similar story over at Civil Beat, drew a number of negative comments by readers saying the order reflects bias on Watson’s part and bodes ill for the outcome of the case.

My reply is simple. “Get real!”

I would give Watson very high marks for his handling of this case. He seems to be a straight-arrow, and as even-handed as possible as he tries to move the cumbersome case toward a conclusion.

Watson granted the defense motion as to Counts 8 and 9 of the third superseding indictment. At the same time, he denied the defense motion as to other charges in the indictment, leaving 16 other charges against Miske in place.

That alone should put to rest conspiracy theories suggesting a bias in favor of the defense.

The two dismissed charges stemmed from an incident at Kualoa Ranch in May 2017, where Miske and several associates ambushed Lindsey Kinney, who had been publicly feuding with Miske on social media. Although witnesses say at least two shots were fired, Kinney was able to escape unharmed, while the attackers fled the scene. Immediately afterward, Kinney broadcast live video as he drove away from the ambush, identifying Miske and two others, Jacob Smith and John Stancil, Miske’s half-brother, as the ones who attacked him.

Later, in an interview broadcast soon after Miske and 10 original co-defendants were indicted and arrested, Kinney said he had been offered $50,000 to kill Jonathan Fraser, an offer that had been relayed from Miske through a third party. He said that the subsequent ambush at Kuoloa was because his knowledge of the offer had become a danger to Miske as the federal investigation had been closing in.

At the time Miske and his co-defendants were indicted in July 2020, Lindsey Kinney seemed to be a credible and important witness who could put Miske at the scene of the Kualoa ambush and, perhaps more importantly, tie Miske to an offer to pay to have Fraser killed.

But over the next two years, Kinney’s actions all but destroyed his value as a prosecution witness.

In December 2020, an HPD SWAT team executed a search warrant at his home, using a “flash-bang device” to gain entry, and seized a small amount of marijuana, related drug paraphernalia, and three firearms, a handgun and two assault rifles. All were “ghost guns” and had no serial numbers. Court records indicate Kinney resisted and had to be physically subdued.

In July 2021, Kinney applied to “repatriate” to a new Hawaiian nation being promoted by a fringe sovereignty group, Occupied Force Hawaii Army, and submitted an application to “expatriate” from the United States and “repatriate” with what OFHA was pitching as a fledgling nation.

In April 2022, Kinney was arrested and charged with using social media to broadcast threats to behead several people, including the harbor master of the Waianae Small Boat Harbor, the governor, and Honolulu’s mayor. Kinney was convicted, and sentenced in May 2023 to 37 months in federal prison and three years supervised release.

Prosecutors gathered a number of Kinney’s posts, and that exhibit is attached below. These online rants, along with other videos Kinney posted, call into question his mental health, and pretty much destroyed Kinney’s usefulness as a witness in the Miske case.

That’s a long way of saying Judge Watson had good reasons for dismissing the two counts related to the alleged attempt to murder Lindsey Kinney, which his order explains in detail. Conspiracy theories questioning the judge’s honesty and ethics are baseless.

US Exhibit to Motion in Limine #1 – U.S. v. Lindsey Kinney by Ian Lind on Scribd