 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Good morning and aloha everybody. My name is Mark Shklav and I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. And today our program is titled Law and Politics and my guest is a lawyer who came across the sea from the east coast to Hawaii and then he's traveled back and forth all over Asia-Pacific across the sea and back to Hawaii and my guest is Peter Carlisle. Peter is a Hawaii attorney. For most of his professional life he's been in the public spotlight. He served as prosecuting attorney of the city and county of Honolulu and mayor of Honolulu. Peter is presently in private law practice but he still has an interest in politics and law and that's why I've asked him here. I've asked him to talk a little bit about it. While he was a prosecuting attorney Peter personally prosecuted high profile cases and advocated for tougher sentencing laws. As mayor he supported rail transit and promoted Honolulu as an Asia-Pacific business center. I want to ask him about his experience and his knowledge and those serious topics and what he sees presently in Honolulu and what he sees for the future but first welcome Peter. Good to see you. It's a pleasure to be here. We've known each other for years and years as you pointed out and yes I invaded the islands from the east coast having stopped first in Kent Connecticut for high school then University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for undergraduate school and then finally law school at UCLA. And you made your way across the continent and over here to Hawaii. I did with a lot of enthusiasm by the time I arrived here because I'd been here before and decided that I needed to come back and stay. Okay I want to get to that in a minute but first of all before we get into all the serious talk okay you were prosecuting attorney yes you were the mayor yes of our city both really serious jobs Peter yes a lot of serious topics. But before we get into those was there any fun or humor in those jobs I mean was there anything that that made it in you know enjoyable or gave you a laugh. If you didn't have humor in that job you would go crazy in about 20 minutes. So there were all sorts of interesting things that happened in the hallways of the court house in the accusations pointed at me by some of the people who weren't happy with me and I took great joy and enthusiasm and happiness if I made somebody's life really miserable like a criminal or a defense attorney who wanted me to give them a deal it made me all the better. I see so the job itself was fun is what you're telling me. The job was fun because it's absolutely intense for periods but then there are lulls which you can sort of sit back and relax and enjoy and being mayor a lot of people will treat you very very well whether they like you or not and they think that's going to get them somewhere which unfortunately for them it didn't but it's it really can have very very interesting things happen. I once had a guy in the courtroom who had done something wrong and I was trying to put him in jail and I said there I want to have his bond revoked and so I kept on saying I said you know he's done this he's done this like this and he got tired of it so he turned over to me and he said hey you're an SOV got up and ran out of the courtroom with two people two people following after him who had guns and handcuffs and he came back in with a lot less freedom than he had when he had when he was running away. All right so those type of episodes add to the the the joy of the job. Well it's it's entertaining you know and for me I always enjoyed being a prosecutor because. What is a prosecutor? Prosecutor is the person who enforces the laws of the city and county of Honolulu in the state of Hawaii and it's the person who if somebody robs a bank you they're arrested the police do all the investigation and then on our side it's our job to convict the person and see to it that they're sentencing and then deal with the appellate matters as well. Okay I interrupted you you were talking about cases that you'd handle I know you handled some heavy-duty cases murder cases that type of cases yeah how do you deal with that I mean how do you deal with the stress of those cases and the and the concern and the worry about who you're dealing with how does that I think a lot of it has to do with practice you know you can't buy a jury trial these days and in the legal profession except if you're a public defender or you're a prosecutor and I always knew that the bad guy was the bad guy and never really felt particularly sympathetic for the worst of them now there are other people who you find they make mistakes and there is at least a potential for rehabilitation that's weighed into the equation as well but frankly when you're dealing with people who are mass murderers if you deal with people who are molesting small children those type of people you really get your pleasure by putting them in jail so it never there wasn't a stress there was an energy to do it for you and in that sense yeah yeah yeah right yeah well I mean there is a stress because you know I mean if the cameras are blazing at you and you're trying to put somebody who's horrible in the community is infuriated at for all the right reasons then yeah there's a stress to make sure that you go through and you know and the courtroom is a very fluid situation I mean you can never tell from point A to point B what's going to be happening in the next 30 or 40 minutes so you have to be pretty much an on-your-foot sort of guy you have to be on your feet yeah so any moment things can change in the courtroom and you got to be just aware of that and be able to to move move with whatever happens is what you're saying yeah it varies from time to time I mean there are some some people who treated prosecutors very fairly and there are some people who are on the appellate courts or who are judges who don't do anything for the prosecutor and whatsoever if anything they get in the way and those people are frustrating and aggravating but the good news is that you make them just as angry at you as they you are at them and of course you have to deal with defense counsel and some of them are some are but you know that by the vast majority of defense counsel do an honorable job I mean there has to be a defense it has to be in that very adversary system and in general there aren't a whole lot of people who are intentionally doing things that are unethical and they stick to the code now that's not true for all I know we've had defense attorneys who've gone to jail on occasion we've had a few prosecutors on occasion that have gone to jail but as a matter of fact very very small percentage it's hard for them to get off that white charging horse and take all that armor off so but it's a rare occurrence for that to occur you know you mentioned that sometimes there are people that don't intend to do bad things and they do them and then there's some people that are just you I can tell you feel there there's no hope they're inherently bad in Hawaii let's say they're bad but they have a completely different point of view I mean if you're in a courtroom and you're a prosecutor and you're not just fighting the defense attorney you're fighting the judge as well that's not a good situation okay okay now in when you were when you were the prosecutor what time period was that that was well I started as a line guy in 78 for ten years I was a line prosecutor which means I wasn't in charge then I think it was about ten years later that I ended up being elevated to the elected prosecuting attorney that was the third elected prosecuting attorney in Honolulu and then so I think the entire period was about a quarter of a century okay well during that period of time Peter did we have organized crime in Hawaii what is there such a thing I mean what is organized crime do we have it did we have it then do we have it now what do we do about it well organized crime depends again on how you define it but yes you know I mean two more two people who can organize a conspiracy that you can call that organized crime I tend to look at it as a sort of a more expansive organization that is out to create havoc in the world people who have organized crime the yakuza those are the types of people you have to worry about some of the drug cartel people you have to worry about those people are what in my opinion are organized and we had the yakuza here during your term as prosecutor I mean I know that personally I've seen it uh drug cartels I'm not aware of but I suspect that there are some involved here take somebody to bring the crystal methamphetamine over here we had issues with places like North Korea for one and others that actually sent the methamphetamine over here now it's across the border in Mexico and then there was also a period when I think it was called Batu it was brought over from the Philippines and how do we deal with it it's a prosecutor how do I mean have we dealt with it is it can we ever get rid of it you can you can make progress it's never really gone completely away and there are always people who are using the various means to try and have some advantage in the criminal empire but no it's never completely gone away it's it's like I mean it's like the common cold it's never gone away it's always there and then sometimes it's exacerbated so that you have pneumonia then you get up to the period where either it's life-threatening or it's an organization their their entire effort and goal is to profit from criminal activities it's all about money it's all about money then well except when it's all about money then it's also on occasion these guys get mad at each other it's also power so if somebody wants to be a power and ego is that's a better way of putting it yeah that that's absolutely true I mean they want to rise to the top they want to be known as the kingpin and lo and behold they get there and then somebody else decides that they want to be able to step in and do that you know Escobar those kinds of people were all had a billion dollar empires before a billion dollars wasn't quite as much it was a lot more money than it is right now and then pay taxes yeah and it won't be affected by the new tax law I don't think so okay you mentioned earlier that sometimes prosecutors get in trouble and have been in jail too yeah and so as a prosecutor as the head prosecutor how do you deal with that in your office I mean how do you practically deal with that when a prosecutor is accused of something or is is in trouble or even gets convicted how do you deal with that you know I don't recall one during my watch but then again Doug Chin was you know also with me on my watch and he was you know watching out for it carefully and making sure that those types of things didn't go on but if you found somebody who had done something highly unethical then there's some people who will do that kind of thing then it is your job to turn them in and your job is to see that they are appropriately handled by somebody where there's no conflict of interest and make sure that they are given their just deserves which if it means disciplinary action then it's disciplinary action and if you're told by the disciplinary counsel this person needs to be released which I don't believe they ever did to me but or asked me to I would have followed their advice okay okay now at some point in time you decided you might want to try to become mayor get involved in the politics of downtown Honolulu a very weak moment okay well tell us what happened how did you how did you decide to get into politics how did you decide to run for mayor what what spurred you on to do that I had spent really quite a long time as the prosecutor and I had gotten to the point where the office was running itself very smoothly in large part by Doug but also because we had made sure that through the process of evolution in the office we had good people who knew what they were doing and so I really had become less necessary and I had had the the pleasure of trying as you said very high-profile very significant cases and it had gotten to that point where it was time for me to go and let the office continue in the hands of somebody who I could trust to be able to do it Don Piccaro was somebody who I could trust to do it with Doug being there it would have been also very easy for it to carry on in the appropriate manner so that was when I decided it was time to take a look in the next logical place to go was in the city because I was a city being for my entire career at that point okay all right now during your term as mayor you were in favor of rail transit it was all about rail rail rail it's still about rail rail rail all right in in the few seconds right now tell us how are we going to solve this rail problem what do we do what can we do based on your experience as mayor finish the job finish the job you've got to finish the job and frankly that's what I was advocating for ever since I got into it and the person who absolutely gave me the greatest guidance in that regard was a gentleman by the name of Dan Inouye and Dan Inouye was a huge advocate for rail and he wanted to make sure that this was going to be his gift that he left for posterity as his last great public works and it's a huge public works it's cost all sorts of money there have been cost overruns from start to finish and the reason for that is Randy Roth Ben Cayetano and Cliff Slater period do you want to explain that or is that well the people who put on put all the the legal blockage in the way the barriers one after another after another and anybody who has any knowledge of the construction industry knows that if you start slowing things down then costs rise schedules aren't kept and there's a whole series of new problems so this did not have to be this expensive it was made that expensive for people who were stuck to last century type thinking and they succeeded in costing everybody a whole lot of money a delay the delay delay delay delay it's you know and it's you know they do that in uh in civil cases and in criminal cases too delay is is basically puts the pocket and the puts money in the lawyer's pocket doesn't get the case resolved well of course if you're a defendant you always want to delay of course you want to delay till the end of time witnesses may disappear and by nefarious means and non-nefarious means then memories are you know are gone circumstances change all of those things are problems so it's your background as a prosecutor kind of came into play a little bit as mayor in a way i look at the two has always having been related yeah how's that i mean well they're related in the way that you approach problems i mean if you have something that's a difficulty and you need to overcome it then use either stick to your guns or you find something new that says hey we've got to do this in a different way or two it's got to stop all together and if you get a new ruling by the supreme court of the united states or by the local courts and you're forced to follow something that's yet some new hurdle to the prosecution you're stuck with it you may not agree with it you may despise it you may even think it's ill advised many times that's the case but it's your job to follow the law so on rail just going back to rail for a minute we got a your your you say let's finish this job let's get it done let's just get it over with move on you have to and okay we've got some other problems with the city you think okay and briefly briefly just give me your your quick answers for a couple things one homelessness what are we gonna what do we do i mean it's what is the is there a solution or is it yeah get tough i mean you have to remember the old days we didn't have people living like this right why we've suddenly given these people free reign to sit there and take over parks and lead filth everywhere and make lives frightening for some people including children you got to stop it you know and whether it means institutionalizing them or incarcerating them or putting someplace with a slab in it where they can all sleep behind walls or barbed wire whatever you want to do i mean that's that that's my mind makes more sense you know we we had these people years and years ago i mean when i was young they were called hobos if they were on trains and they were called vagrants well we lost the vagrancy laws and we lost the power to control the public public but public places there has been that change in the law where they say that you got to keep you can't keep people behind walls of mental institutions anymore if they don't are not a harm to yourselves or to the public and that depends on how you find harm right so that's but yes the answer is correct if they're if they're a danger to themselves and a danger to society you can take steps but if there's somebody who is just sitting around rotting away and urinating all over themselves apparently that's something we put up for far too long and far too often okay now one thing you mentioned that i i want to get to before we're pow here is you say you came across the continent i did you know to hawaii uh what in your background made you able to make that transition what what what from new jersey to north carolina right and and what west coast what what the progress had always been to warmer weather okay i mean i was in connecticut in the winter which was brutal uh then north carolina was not brutal but it was uh it was a little chillier uh when you get to los angeles you got basketball there so what bass that's made all the difference in the world you know and i certainly was added a great deal to the north carolina basketball team i watched them and uh then i went to to southern california in los angeles and that was another big city so that was fun uh and then i came out here on a quarter away program and uh was an intern and decided that this was the place to stay and it was uh so it was a big pleasure and you and you you somehow got into the culture and the key was to get me into a job with uh uh in the prosecutor's office and at that time uh when i walked through the door the prosecutor's office was pretty much in disarray what had happened was is that they had stopped uh grooming people to it was looked as sort of a stopping place before you can go with the big boys in the private sector so it was looked at sort of a way station and that's the way it was being treated and that's how because it was treated like that that's why we had the problems so it got turned around uh almost 180 degrees to what was once afforded as a professional office now one thing when you were um mayor you were advocating for hawaii's to be uh like a center of the pacific or the the the asia can't you know in the few minutes we have left what can we do i mean is that possible and what did you learn about it yeah yeah the the big thing that happened i mean we owe a great debt of gratitude to president obama who gave us a peck which a peck allowed us to to showcase hawaii is a serious place to do business i mean you could come here and you could be coming from the cold weather and your family can be there and they're all enjoying the pleasures of hawaii but the other thing you can do is you can sit in the back room on occasion or get together with the people and you start talking about them about business and you try and cultivate it so that you would have the type of geneva type atmosphere here in hawaii at the geneva of the pacific which is what we were always uh aiming for and a peck gave us a really great start into that and a time when we were taken seriously is it still possible for us to move in that direction well i in the current present political climate i don't think anybody really knows what's occurring in washington dc uh or other parts of the nation considering the hostility and the uh the unusual actions of some of the players who are involved okay okay all right politically correct well yeah i'll have to get you for another show to get the i mean dodge that one but let me ask you just really briefly sure we have about a minute left how do you deal with victory and defeat you've been through both up and down and prosecutor and mayor how do you handle those things you know uh you get over it i mean the the thing is is that when you start off as an attorney you really don't know what you're doing most of the time in terms of pragmatic applications of the law and uh so you make mistakes and you get over them and you move forward and you make big mistakes move on you know if you're if you're a prosecutor and you've never lost a case that means you've never tried to get so you know the so you have to get you have to be able to do that and that i think involves whether you're optimistic or pessimistic and i am a perpetual optimist and i'm happy to to stand up you know brush myself off and go into the battle again and we have to move on right now so our program is over this is waiting short but thank you very much i appreciate your time good good to see you a pleasure always my friend aloha