Honolulu Lite
Cop shooting columns
a case of deja vuLast week when I started off a column with the line "For a state that doesn't have capital punishment, Hawaii sure executes a lot of criminals," it seemed to have a familiar ring to it. Pithy and ironic statements often have a familiar ring, but this one had really an "Avon Calling!" kind of a ring.
Then, while preparing to write today's column, I came across a column I'd done a year ago that began, "For a state with no capital punishment, there sure are a lot of criminals put to death around here."
Wow. I guess it's true what they say: Great minds really do think alike. Apparently I was a little more on my writing game a year ago because I referred to the shooting of criminals by police as "copital punishment," a form of Advanced Word Play of which I'm evidently no longer capable. One could suggest that inadvertently repeating oneself in print is an early indication of Alzheimer's disease, although when one starts referring to oneself as one, one may have more serious problems than mere Alzheimer's in the cranial cavity. One, or two, or -- for that matter -- three, could just as easily suggest that if Honolulu police didn't have such a long history of shooting people to death, we wouldn't be in this grammatical quagmire to begin with.
What prompted the June 2001 column was that police had just killed a 20-year-old guy who had gotten drunk at a party and shot at police when they showed up to investigate.
I pointed out then that shooting at Honolulu police was essentially a death warrant, which was ironic because Hawaii prides itself on not having capital punishment.
It's also true that Hawaii's judges are notoriously soft on criminals. We have seen, time and again, bad guys who have been arrested literally 50 or 70 times and yet never get any substantial prison sentence. The point of the column a year ago was that lawbreakers would do better to throw themselves on the mercy of the legal system then in the line of fire of HPD.
I suggested last week -- purely in jest -- that maybe judges aren't locking up criminals because they WANT them to face the justice of the streets. Of course, no one would ever take that suggestion seriously except, apparently, judges.
Hawaii State Judiciary spokesman Marsha Kitagawa wrote a letter to the editor assuring the public that judges do NOT "shorten prisoners' jail times to get them back on the streets so that they can be killed by police." She also said judges can't shorten jail time anyway, because that's up to the parole board.
Look. No one can seriously deny that Hawaii judges have not been excessively lenient to convicted criminals. One would like to think it is not because they simply want predators roaming the streets. One would like to think the judges have some secret plan for protecting society. But one gets a headache when one thinks this way for too long.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com