Editorials
Monday, July 27, 1998

Janto sentence is
message to criminals

FRANK Janto's minimum 75-year sentence for the murder of a Wahiawa woman shows that the Hawaii parole board is responsive to the need to get tough on career criminals. Janto's punishment is the longest minimum sentence ever set by the Hawaii Paroling Authority, although it is about two decades shorter than city Prosecutor Peter Carlisle had requested. At least the 25 years that Janto must serve before applying for early release will be plenty of time for him to reflect on his crime and his long career as scourge of the community.

In two lengthy essays in Saturday's Insight section, Carlisle detailed the illustrious criminality of 35-year-old Janto. As a juvenile, he was referred to family court for terroristic threatening, auto theft and assault. His first adult felony conviction was for stealing a car, followed by incidents of domestic abuse, child molestation and the serious assault of a 63-year-old woman near the Ala Wai Canal.

Then, on June 9, 1997, Janto "graduated" to murder. As described by Carlisle in gruesome detail, Janto brutally beat 5-foot-2, 100-pound Bongak "Jackie" Koja as she took her customary early-morning exercise walk along California Avenue. He then threw the senior citizen's body into a Leilehua High School trash dumpster, whose contents were hauled away, compacted and incinerated at Campbell Industrial Park.

Carlisle personally prosecuted the case, and Janto received a life sentence for murder in the second degree.

During testimony before the parole board last week, Janto hung his head for most of the hearing. But he snapped at parole board member Mary Tiwanak when she said that his pattern of violence appeared unfixable. "If nobody gets off their butts to give inmates rehabilitation, where are they going to get it?" Janto asked rhetorically. Parole board member Lani Garcia set him straight, pointing out that the state had invested thousands of dollars toward his rehabilitation, obviously to no avail.

Now that Janto is behind bars, where he belongs, attention must turn to a concern still plaguing the prosecutor. Carlisle has pointed out that, under the repeat offender law, Janto should have automatically served 30 years in jail. But because of a provision in Hawaii, supported by the public defender's office, prior felonies have a limited shelf life.

"Put simply, or maybe incredibly, Janto spent so much time in prison that his prior felonies no longer counted in the eyes of the law when he was sentenced for murder," according to Carlisle. "Efforts to correct this law have failed in the Legislature for the past two years."

Then let the third year be a charm. In next year's session, legislators should re-evaluate and revamp the laws affecting repeat offenders. Imagine if Janto hadn't been handed a long sentence, and had not been required to stay behind bars for decades because of a technicality on the books. Perhaps Frank Janto can make a contribution to society after all -- by serving as the impetus for tougher repeat offender laws in Hawaii.

Special column by prosecutor Peter Carlisle

U.S. Capitol shootings

SECURITY apparatus protecting the U.S. Capitol from armed intrusion functions as designed. As with all public buildings, its accessibility would be sharply limited if security systems were tightened to a degree that they became insurmountable barriers. An occasional outburst like the shooting that occurred Friday is a natural consequence of an open government.

Any violent incident at a facility protected by a security system is bound to prompt a review and possible tightening of the process. Despite the fact that two police officers were killed and a tourist was wounded by shots fired by the gunman, who also was shot, the Capitol's security system appears to have functioned as designed. The gunman went around a metal detector, and the shooting occurred in a corridor in that vicinity.

Security became a concern at the Capitol after 1954, when Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the House gallery, wounding five members of Congress. In 1971, a bomb exploded in a men's restroom, but no one was injured. The metal detectors were installed after a bomb exploded outside the main Senate chamber in 1983. Under the present system, only members of Congress are allowed entry without passing through the detectors and submitting to X-ray examination of bags.

Security could be tighter at entrances to the Capitol, but no system that allows access to the general public can prevent a reckless attack like that made by Friday's gunman. Congress is not an appropriate institution for security similar to the wall of protection at the White House, where all visits by the public must be arranged in advance and approved only after a thorough check of the applicant's record by the FBI. "It is necessary to do a thorough review of security here but not to barricade this place from the American people," says Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents Washington, D.C., in Congress. "You can't design security around a maniac." Added House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., during a radio address, "Please help this country learn to live with its freedom. Please help those who are troubled (to) learn to live peacefully with their problems."

The Capitol security system is comprised not only of metal detectors and other mechanical devices but of numerous law-enforcement officers. Those security personnel, including the two heroic policemen who were killed, showed that the system works when they overcame the gunman and prevented further violence. Hawaii State Safety Director Keith Kaneshiro's vow, in the wake of the tragedy, to review security at the state Capitol and Washington Place is prudent as well.

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