• Eight years ago speeding tickets were decriminalized. Before this time getting a speeding ticket was an automatic summons to court. Speeders were then given the option to handle a ticket in two ways:
  1. Contest the ticket in court
  2. Accept the ticket and send a payment in by mail
• Moving violations are also decriminalized, these include
  1. Driving without a license
  2. Driving without insurance, etc…
  3. Drunk driving
• If there is no follow-up on a ticket it is "contempt of court" resulting in:
  1. A petty misdemeanor
  2. 30 days in jail
• If outstanding fines are not taken care of, the driver's license cannot be renewed
• There is not enough manpower to follow-up on warrants (Choi estimated that the money from outstanding warrants would pay State Judiciary's entire yearly budget)
• The follow-up is performed by the sheriff on Hawai`i island
• Offenders can make payments on Hawai`i Island
• Proposed Action: Hire Deputy Sheriff to follow-up on warrants. The amount received may pay staff costs
• Currently, warrants are purged after a period of time
• CDL's (Commercial Driver's License) are strictly enforced
• When a speeder appears before a judge there are two kinds of driving abstracts that can be presented before the judge:
  1. Paid and unpaid violations
  2. Truncated
• An abstract may not be present unless it is requested by the judge or presented by the prosecutor - with this system, it is hard to identify the repeat offenders
• There is no point system anymore, but insurance companies still monitor driving records
• It's in the code that violations over 3 years old are not to be considered
• Persons with 5 or more speeding tickets usually end up with other infractions and will eventually get caught - a small number of people create the most problem, some have 30-40 page abstracts
• Dealing with the top 300 people with the most infractions would take care of 50 percent of the problem.
• It is important the newspapers print the list of bench warrants
• Important to allow folks to pay their fine installments or do community service to cover the cost - applying the "Choi Law" dealing with insurance to speeding violations
• One day in jail pays $20 toward one's fine
• Judges cannot sentence someone to physical labor - it has to be voluntary
• Judges seldom send speeders to court
• Proposed Action: Work with the prosecutors office or administrative judge's office who can assign a law clerk to ponder potential processes for dealing with repeat offenders; e.g., if a persons gets two speeding tickets in a month, they have to go to court. (Note: the person assigned to this task should understand the current procedures and know how to write a law.)
• Driver's education department only has two staff
• Right now only a fraction get the full (maximum fine)
• A change in culture may be needed to get the judges to impose a higher fine - they don't want to get the "hanging judge syndrome" The defense bar complains too loud if judges give high fines. Judges need to be in the general range as other judges or would be seen as capricious
• Judge Schutte now give the minimum for a 1st time DUI and the maximum for the 2nd offense
• Proposed Action: Get feed back from Deputy's on how fines are going
• There will be two new judges in the next five years
• How judges are presently appointed:
  1. People apply
  2. A commission of lay people and attorneys pick the top six candidates
  3. The chief justice pick the judge from those six
  4. The appointment is not confirmed by the senate
• There is a perception that politics are not heavily involved
• Judges only get about $60,000/year, so the best don't often apply
• Getting good judges is hard
• Good lawyers don't always make good judges - the judicial philosophy is so different from the court's

• Ask the deputy prosecutors for input - Ann
• Check with police department - Paul
• Check with Randy Apele on what statistics are being kept - Janet
• Ask Randy Apele to come and talk at the third meeting - Ann

Addressing Barriers:

1. Public
2. Police
3. Law Makers
4. Judicial Courts
5. Visitor Industry
6. Road Departments (Feds, State, County)
7. Designers: Planners: architects
8. Schools
9. Media
10. Businesses
11. Churches
12. Governor Lingle