When the bailiff declares Division 2 of the 3rd Circuit Court in session Tuesday, for the first time in 12 1/2 years — with the exception of vacations — the presiding judge will not be Glenn S. Hara.
When the bailiff declares Division 2 of the 3rd Circuit Court in session Tuesday, for the first time in 12 1/2 years — with the exception of vacations — the presiding judge will not be Glenn S. Hara.
That’s because the longtime Hilo jurist retired at the close of business Friday, less than a month before he reaches the retirement age of 70 mandated by the state constitution.
“It’s inevitable,” Hara told the Tribune-Herald on Wednesday. “While I think I can still contribute, I think it’s a good time to retire.”
Added Kona Circuit Judge Ronald Ibarra, the 3rd Circuit’s chief judge who faces his own mandatory retirement later this year, “We’re going to miss Judge Hara.”
Hara said he’s enjoyed his dozen-plus years on the bench.
“It’s a great honor to be invested with the power and the authority of being a judge for your community, and having the trust of the community in you to be able to dispense that power for the purpose of justice,” he said.
Hara’s legal experience includes service as a judge advocate general officer in the U.S. Army and the Hawaii National Guard, state deputy attorney general, county deputy prosecutor and private attorney in the areas of real estate, commercial counseling and litigation, and wills, trusts and probate law, and from 1982-87, a per diem district court judge.
Asked about his plans, Hara said he’d be “basically, taking some time to think about what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my retirement. I really have no plans at all.”
“The only real definite thing is I’m probably going to be doing more traveling and see my grandkids more,” he added.
Hara, a Hilo High School class of 1964 alum, earned an undergraduate degree in economics and law degree at Stanford University. He and his wife, Janet, a certified public accountant who recently retired from the Taketa, Iwata, Hara &Associates CPA firm, have two sons and two grandchildren in Seattle and a daughter in San Francisco.
“It looks like most of the travel will be on the West Coast,” Hara said.
The now-retired judge also teaches judo at the Higashi Hongwanji Mission in Hilo.
“It’s fun working with kids. I’ve always liked that,” he said. “My passion in terms of coaching kids is really in soccer, but I just haven’t had the time to do that while I’m on the bench.”
Hara said expanding his coaching schedule is “definitely on the list of possibilities that I’m considering.”
“When you make these choices, you make commitments and you have to balance them all. And I want to make sure that I can enjoy my retirement and still keep my commitments,” he explained.
As for memorable cases during his tenure, the judge replied, “That’s hard.”
“When you’re sitting on the bench, it’s just a constant flow of cases, and I don’t think any one thing or any one case really stands out to me as being a signature in my career here,” he said. “I think the main thing is that we were able to keep the court functioning as it should in being able to dispense justice throughout these 12 1/2 years.”
In the past year, Hara accepted a guilty plea for manslaughter in the case of Jaylin Kema, mother of Peter Kema Jr. The “Peter Boy” case is the most notorious missing child-turned-murder case in state history. Kema is expected to testify against her husband, Peter Kema Sr., accused of the 1997 murder of the 6-year-old boy.
The judge sentenced William Roy Carroll III to five years in prison for the vandalism of the Kamehameha statue in Hilo and theft of the bronze monarch’s spear.
He also sentenced John Williams, the self-styled lord of a castle-type dwelling in lower Puna, to 10 years after a jury found him guilty of burglary. Hara maintained his composure as “Castle John” ranted and called the judge “a war criminal,” “coward” and “soulless.”
The job wasn’t easy or without controversy. Jury verdicts in three of the highest-profile trials Hara presided over were vacated upon appeal. Peter Bailey was sentenced on retrial to 20 years for sex assault, with Hara presiding, after the Intermediate Court of Appeals ruled he should have declared a mistrial the first time around after a juror told others Bailey was a paroled murderer. Malaki McBride is still awaiting a murder retrial after the ICA ruled jury instructions were erroneously read. The ICA also ruled Hara should have recused himself from a civil trial that resulted in a judgment of $1.4 million in favor of Big Island Toyota against former company executive Victor Trevino because Hara had a prior personal and legal relationship with another Big Island Toyota executive.
Big Island hunters were grateful to Hara in 2014 when he dismissed a state lawsuit seeking to exempt state employees and contractors from county and state laws banning aerial hunting for feral mammals outside the critical palila bird habitat on Mauna Kea.
Hara also sentenced a habitual DUI offender, Byron Miyashiro, to a year in jail in 2014 — not the maximum five-year term, but a relatively stiff sentence in a DUI case where no one was injured. At the time, Miyashiro was on probation for another habitual drunken-driving conviction. Like the vast majority of criminal cases, Miyashiro’s never went to trial. Prosecutors, in return for his guilty plea, dropped charges of consuming or possessing liquor while driving and failure to give information or render aid after a collision.
“We have a very, very collegial legal community,” Hara said. “For the most part, the attorneys are able to work out collaborative solutions, and I think that’s a very productive way to practice law — and we have it here on the island.”
During sentencing, Hara often questioned and sometimes lectured defendants about their life choices, especially where drugs and violence are concerned.
“One of the methods they’re using in the rehabilitative aspects in probation and parole is cognitive behavior therapy,” he said. “That’s to get them to change their thinking. I have very little time to spend with them, but the few minutes I have with them, I try to plant an idea in their heads to get them thinking.”
In reply to a question about recidivism, the judge posed the question of his own: “Compared to what?”
“The (defendants) that do come back you seem to notice. But I don’t think that’s true for everybody,” he noted. “Towards the end of the year, I go and clean out some of my paperwork. And I’m looking at it and I go, ‘Hey, this guy never came back and this guy never came back.’ And there are a lot of people that don’t come back.
“… I think you have to give credit to the system as a whole — probation, the police and everybody. I think we’re all trying to work to see if somebody gets into trouble, if they offend, that they don’t come back.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.