AFTER months of being the poster girl for Couch Potatoes Anonymous, I finally got off my okole and joined a well-known athletic club. On my first day there, I looked around at the huge array of gleaming weight machines and cardio-vascular contraptions and tried not to panic. Exercise some restraint
on electing judgesEveryone else seemed to be a fitness buff -- muscular, trim, glistening with perspiration and seemingly deep in the zone.
But, hey, I was motivated. So this out-of-shape senior editor went for broke -- tackling the treadmill, exercise bike and a ski-machine until my face got as red as pickled mango.
Tired but happy, I headed for the locker room. Next day, the same routine -- not by force but by choice.
Far from bragging, I'm hoping to make a point. Everybody who exercises regularly knows that no one else can coerce you to do so. It takes self-discipline and a real desire to succeed. That's the only way to get results.
Which brings me to my commentary this past Monday on the Chinky Mahoe case titled, "What must victims of molestation think?" It decried the sentence of the famous hula teacher, who got a scant five years' probation and community service for pleading no contest to molesting four of his students.
My column was pretty hard on Circuit Judge Wilfred Watanabe for handing down a way-too-lenient punishment on the celebrity defendant. It questioned his judicial judgment and ended with the rhetorical query, "Is justice blind or simply star-struck?"
Any day now I expect a nasty rebuttal from Chief Justice Moon or Courts Administrator Broderick, defending the integrity of their man, Watanabe.
But I didn't expect to get so many e-mail messages and letters to the editor in favor of a very bad idea that, every so often, rears its ugly head -- electing judges.
Should our men and women in black robes be elevated to and kept on the bench by a show of hands of our illustrious voters? Here's the short answer: NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!
Absolutely not! Look at the craziness now pervading this election season, with candidates making all kinds of grandiose promises and denigrating each other. Think of all the people who punch their ballots based on who is the best looking, or who shares the same ethnicity, or who has the slickest TV commercials.
Is this how we want to pick those learned individuals who must interpret the law? Only if we want a bunch of hanging judges kowtowing to a lynch mob mentality.
It's the beauty of judicial independence that we can bitch and moan about verdicts and sentences after they're handed down and still sleep at night, secure in the knowledge that judges actually believe they are doing the right thing. That includes not worrying about whether their decisions will enhance their hopes for re-election.
WHICH is why an independent judiciary is like exercising. Nobody can make you go to the gym. You've got to do it all on your own. The burn might be torture while working out but, man, it sure feels good when it's over.
Same thing with judges who are NOT elected. Nobody can tell them how to rule. (Can't you just see elected judges finding their biggest campaign contributors not guilty?) They've got to decide all on their own. They might be too harsh or lenient at times (as in the case of Chinky Mahoe), but at least people can feel good that judges aren't bowing to public opinion or political pressure.
Justice, after all, is not a popularity contest.
Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
DianeChang@aol.com, or by fax at 523-7863.