Like a mob with pitchforks and shovels, Hawaiians love to attack a killer; proven or simply alleged. I hate defending people accused of killing other people and that is not what I intend to do here. I want to review, for myself, what it means to live in a free democracy. We have a Constitution and Bill of Rights that are largely held to be the model for the inalienable rights of every citizen throughout the globe.
Yet, right here at home, the most basic tenents of our freedom are attacked when a 15 year-old boy allegedly rapes and kills an older woman. Without regard for the rule of law, over 40 people responded to the Honolulu Star Bulletin’s report “Court takes its time despite ‘impatience’” on June 30, 2008, condemning the boy and the Courts for patiently weighing his Constitutional rights.
Children fall under the auspices of our Family Court system which is confidential and secret. In my opinion, this is the major cause of the problem that Hawaiians have with this case and is an argument against the ever-so-closely guarded secrecy the Family Court enjoys.
In my experience, I have not been inspired that Family Court judges adhere to basic tenents of the law. A TRO is issued upon a preponderance of allegations. The allegations are turned into evidence without any evidence. The fears inside a woman’s mind are enough to prove a man guilty of being a perpetrator of unnamed domestic violence and bad parenting. Hearsay is introduced and a man’s accusers are not required to appear before him. Court appointed lackeys, who have no background in child behaviors during divorce, make sweeping decisions about custody and visitation while caught up in their own hysterical mania. A man’s children are taken away for years. I can’t mourn. My children are not dead. But their childhood is being taken away.
For those who have corrupted the phrase “Visitation delayed is visitation denied” into “justice delayed is justice denied,” I can only hope that the two are never confused by reasonable people.
In the above mentioned case, it is rumored that questions have arisen whether this child, in spite of the heinousness of the crime, may have been mentally incompetent at the time of the murder. I don’t know the boy. I can’t defend him. And most of the people writing in to comment on this article don’t know him. The difference is that they are damning the boy that he should be tried and convicted as an adult, while I am praying that the boy gets transferred to the adult court system so that his Constitutional rights can be upheld.
In that case, “Justice delayed may be justice.”
