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Editorials
Thursday, August 17, 2000
Drunk-driving pardon
seems to be justifiedThe issue: Governor Cayetano has pardoned attorney Thomas J. Foley in a drunken-driving fatality.
REPUBLICAN state legislators, party chairwoman Linda Lingle and City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle have joined Mothers Against Drunk Driving in denouncing Governor Cayetano's pardon of Thomas M. Foley. He was a prominent attorney who was convicted of negligent homicide and sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison for killing a man and seriously injuring the man's wife in a 1995 auto accident when he was driving while drunk. Foley was nearing the end of a four-year minimum term when he was pardoned.
House Minority Leader Barbara Marumoto said the Hawaii chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving has worked for years to end the "slap on the wrist" approach to drunken driving offenses, and "with a stroke of the pen the governor has belittled the work of that group and the tragic deaths of drunk-driving victims."
Minority Floor Leader David Pendleton said Cayetano's pardon of Foley suggests prominent people get special treatment. "If Mr. Foley was someone with fewer connections in this community, there is no way that he would have been pardoned," he said. "Your average citizen would still be in jail, paying the price for taking another's life."
Special treatment for prominent people would indeed be outrageous, and the critics are correct in stating that drunken driving cannot be condoned.
But the facts in the Foley case seem to support the governor's decision. Among them was a statement by the victims' family saying that Foley had shown remorse and asking that he not be sent to prison.
Cayetano said Foley had been a model inmate and an exemplary participant in the work-furlough program. "He has accepted full responsibility for the crime and expressed remorse, and has done all he can do to help the victims' family," the governor said. "This guy doesn't belong in jail."
Nor has Cayetano reserved pardons for prominent persons. He has issued 84 pardons, most of them to people with no political connections.
PARDONS are appropriate when the subjects have demonstrated contrition, have been rehabilitated and pose no threat to society. What purpose can be served by continuing to keep them in prison or on parole under those conditions?
When responsibly exercised, the governor's pardoning authority is a useful part of the criminal justice system. The Foley case was a responsible use of the pardon.
State Web Site
Hawaiians-only OHA
candidates rejected
THE state attorney general's office seems to insist that the Office of Hawaiian Affairs be treated by courts the same as American Indian tribal councils, a concept that was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in February. Returning to court from every angle of this issue will do nothing but keep state lawyers busy spinning their wheels.
It is time for the state to accept the broad principle adopted by the high court in Rice vs. Cayetano and move on to possible legislative solutions. The Supreme Court's decision in the Rice case lifted the restriction in OHA elections to Hawaiian voters. The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, declared that "race cannot qualify some and disqualify others from full participation in our democracy."
Refusing to accept that principle, the Hawaii attorney general's office decided that the state could impose the same racial restriction on candidates for trustee that the Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional when imposed on voters. U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor has predictably enjoined the state from continuing to discriminate against non-Hawaiians with regard to candidates in the OHA board elections.
State Deputy Attorney General Girard Lau says he will go forward with the case. He believes he will eventually make Judge Gillmor "realize that the Hawaiian people are really asking for nothing more than to be treated in the same fashion as other native peoples from around the country."
Did the Supreme Court miss something? Of course not. Lau's argument is flawed because Hawaiians, unlike American Indians, lack recognition as a sovereign entity. As Kennedy stated, "If a non-Indian lacks a right to vote in tribal elections, it is for the reason that such elections are the internal affair of a quasi-sovereign. The OHA elections, by contrast, are the affair of the state of Hawaii."
Hawaii's congressional delegation has introduced legislation that would provide recognition by the federal government of Hawaiians as a "unique and distinct indigenous people." The proposal would presumably establish a status for Hawaiians needed to fulfill the Supreme Court's requirement for limiting participation in elections to Hawaiians. Pursuing the issue in court before such legislation is enacted is a waste of tax dollars.
Office of Hawaiian Affairs
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
