Hawaii County Prosecutors Quit

Friends for Justice learned today that 5 employees in the Hawaii county prosecutors office resigned on or around January 4th.

East Hawaii has 24 prosecutors.

Information is scarce, and no one is talking, but we have reason to believe the majority of resignations may have all been out of the East Hawaii office in Hilo. This corresponds with Hawaii county prosecutor Jay Kimura’s brother Lloyd Kimura pleading guilty to nine counts of bank and mail fraud and theft in a 24 year ponzi scheme involving 50 clients and the theft of over 20 million dollars. That story like this one got no coverage in the local Hawaii county newspapers.

Friends for Justice was in court in Hilo Thursday January 6th in Judge Hara’s court supporting Reverend Nancy Harris’s religious marijuana case. The prosecutor in that case Rick Damerville made reference to an event in the prosecutors office on January 4th in response to the judges inquiry about scheduling a trial date for Reverend Harris. The defendant in the case made inquiries, because her trial was delayed until July and was told Damerville was staying because of an unexpected mass exodus from Jay Kimura’s office. The prosecutor in Rev. Harris’s case (Damerville) had been scheduled to retire in the near future but said he would be staying on indefinitely.

The widespread corruption in Hawaii county government and Mr. Kimura’s refusal to pursue those cases as well as the dead ends in other high profile murder cases like Peter “boy” Kema Jr, and Clayton Larry Alani, may have been too much for some of the employees in the office. That is admittedly speculation at this point but in the absence of information from Mr. Kimura and the local media we are left to wonder just what happened. Why is this a secret? In a small community like Hilo this is certainly news worthy, yet Mr. Kimura remains silent.

With the repeated procurement contract irregularities in the county that were not pursued, the refusal to pursue police misconduct and crimes and Jay Kimura’s obsession in wasting resources prosecuting legal medical marijuana patients and minor possession of marijuana cases in Hilo this comes as no surprise to Friends for Justice. FFJ was founded to expose these kinds of abuses and help to bring the light of justice to the Hawaii county marijuana cases. We have been documenting these cases and trying to get State and Federal officials to investigate the many abuses we have documented.

Mr. Kimura has been in office longer than most of us can remember, as such he is in the upper echelons of the old boy network in Hilo where prosecution appears at times to be decided by who you know and not by the letter of the law. Nothing shows that more than the 400+ marijuana cases Mr. Kimura prosecuted last year for less than an ounce of marijuana, in spite of the voter passed lowest law enforcement for cannabis ordinance. Mr. Kimura refuses to respect the voters or the law they passed, this has led to a massive waste of resources that should be instead used for the many serious crimes that go unsolved in Hawaii county. Prosecutors in Hawaii county under Mr. Kimura’s supervision have relied on perjured testimony, and manufactured evidance from some officers in many of the major marijuana cases in recent history. This while many murder, corruption, and other violent crimes languished for lack of resources.

We will be updating this story as more facts become available, the wall of secrecy and misinformation has existed in Hilo for so long that it has become the culture to some extent.

Friends for justice is again calling for the legislative auditor to examine this event and the millions of dollars in the asset seizure fund that is controlled by Mr. Kimura.

Something is very wrong in the Hilo prosecutors office. Again some of what I have said here is speculation, but it is up to Mr. Kimura to come clean and explain the things that are happening in his office.

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