Hit parade: One of the more bizarre stories in recent times surfaced during the 2024 bribery trial of former Honolulu County Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro and a raft of other defendants, including local businessman Dennis Mitsunaga, who were accused of funneling $50,000 in campaign contributions to Kaneshiro in exchange for him prosecuting a woman who worked for Mitsunaga. Let’s just say right up top here that they were all acquitted, including Kaneshiro and Mitsunaga.
Yes, that whole story was weird in and of itself. But even crazier was the secondary plot line where one of the defendants, an attorney named Sheri Tanaka, was alleged to have hired a hitman to knock off U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright, who originally had the case, and the main federal prosecutor, Michael Wheat. Seabright ended up recusing himself along with every other federal judge in Hawaiʻi and the case was handed over to Timothy Burgess, a judge who came down from Alaska to preside.
A Special Commentary Project…