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Not Guilty!

by By Anthony Pignataro

December 21, 2006





It isn’t every day that the Liquor Control Board of Adjudication

sits through a two-day trial involving a boat charter company accused

of overserving a customer to the point that she killed a guy while

driving home and then finds said boat company—in this case, Ali`i Nui

Charters of Ma`alaea—not guilty on all counts, but it does sometimes

happen. It happened Dec. 12, though I have to admit I didn’t actually

see it.

The case started a little after 12:30 in the afternoon of Dec. 7.

The board had already dispensed with seven cases—many more than their

usual agenda load—when they picked up the Ali`i Nui matter. I was there

four and a half hours, and saw two witnesses. It wasn’t easy, though

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jeffrey Temas and Ali`i Nui Attorney

Richard Rost made a real effort to turn the whole thing into a gritty

Law & Order episode. Read the following exchange—which took place

three hours into the trial—and decide for yourself whether they

succeeded:

Temas: Was there an objection?



Rost: Did you hear me make one?



Temas: You made some sort of sound.



Four and a half hours I sat through Rost and Temas arguing over the

“rules of evidence”—the normal courtroom requirements for what

witnesses can and can’t say which don’t apply in adjudication cases

because they’re not criminal trials. In any case, I slipped out at 5

p.m., during a break. They board stayed until 9 that night, then

recessed until Tuesday.

And in doing so, they repeated a verdict they made last year, in

which Moose McGillycuddy’s of Lahaina stood accused of overservice,

spent a lot of money on legal representation, fought it and came out

victorious. There’s no way to tell why the board found for Ali`i Nui,

but Rost attributes the verdict to Temas failing to prove that the

customer in question was drunk at the time Ali`i Nui Charters last

served her.

Circumstantial evidence implying guilt may be perfectly admissible

in an adjudication hearing, but it’s nice to see the board can reject

it.