 Welcome to the law with Lawson. Now, today, there is no slides. Now, see, I'm a think tech host that normally doesn't invite guests, so there ain't going to be no guests today, and no slides. But we're going to talk about the MISKY case, right? And that seems to have captured our state's attention. Last year was a K.Loha trial. And, you know, one day I'm going to do, because that, you know, I was down there for that trial, the K.Loha trial, every day last summer. And one day I'm going to summarize, you know, what that trial was about, because you're going to be hearing more about the K.Loha's and Key's kind of show, because I think that may, it may. Now, you know, it's just my humble opinion, but it may tie into this MISKY indictment, because the way it works in federal court is like this, man. When the fairs indict you, right? And the fairs don't do that many cases a year as compared to state cases. And a federal prosecutor does not have to take a case unless he or she wants to, right? And that's why their conviction rate is well over 95% across the board. When I say across the board, I mean throughout the United States, right? It's like the FBI may work up a case and bring it to a federal prosecutor. Federal prosecutors say, look, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not taking that. In state cases, if the police, let's say, gets a call, somebody robbed a bank or whatever, they go over there, arrest a person, charge them with bank robbery and take them down to the, you know, then the prosecutor has to prosecute that case here in a state prosecutor, but not federal. And so when they choose a case, and I used to tell my clients all the time, man, when it's about federal indictment, I'm like, hey, man, you know, we're going to be fighting for real. And so getting back to this mischief, so anyway, so when the fairs indict you, normally they have a ton of evidence to prove against you. And what they're looking for, if you start cooperating, keep in mind, Casin K. Lohan, Louis K. Lohan, before they got smoked by that jury last summer, you know, they remember they was talking about that trash. We're not guilty. We didn't do this, right? And Louis, Louis K. Lohan, some of y'all in the mainland, some of my followers on the mainland, y'all may not know too much about the ex chief of police here in Hawaii, Louis K. Lohan. He's on his way to a federal prison. He hasn't been sentenced yet. He's been smoked, convicted. When I say smoked, that's the law of lawson language for a jury just convicted you. And then his wife was a high ranking deputy prosecuting attorney. In fact, the second highest ranking prosecuting attorney underneath are then Honolulu prosecutor Keats kind of Cheryl, who, by the way, is under federal investigation after receiving a target letter. And I don't know if I touched on this last time or not, but a target letter, this is my professor mode. I got to take off my glasses, rub my nose a little bit, like right here on the bridge, because it does hurt. But anyway, what's the target letter? When it fairs into a target letter, what they're saying is, you know what, we have enough evidence to indict you, right? So I would get a client. They'd come in like professor, I mean attorney lawson, I got a target letter from the federal prosecutor. What does it mean? Am I in trouble? Yes. If it's a target letter, you're in trouble. What do you mean I'm in trouble? Well, a target letter means this, that they have enough evidence to indict you right now. If you want to make it easier on yourself, they want you to come down and talk to them. What do you mean by talk to them? You got to tell them everything you know. And if you've been watching some of the national stuff of Michael Cohen and the national security advisor, the one that was just given a pardon, Flynn, Michael Flynn, and right, when they come in, when a person goes into cooperates, they call it being queen for a day. That means that you can admit to any crime you want to admit to. As long as you tell the truth. So they may tell your client, look, we're only going to charge you with one count of racketeering. All the bank rivalries, all the drug selling, all the things you've done in the past, we're not going to charge you with that. As long as you don't lie to us, when you agree to cooperate. So when your client comes in, they say, hey, attorney Lawson, I got a target letter from the feds. It's about the drug game that I've been involved in, the drug conspiracy I've been involved in. Do you think they got enough evidence to convict me? Then what the lawyer does is they normally call the prosecutor and say, Hey, look, I got Johnny sitting in front of me right here. He says he's got a target letter wish you got on him. Right. And a lot of times the prosecutor may or they may not say, well, look, let Johnny know we got this on him, text messages, phone sale records, cooperating witnesses. We got him on videotape, you know, at the drug house or whatever, coming in and out the house with packages. So let him know that we have this evidence and then see if he wants to come in and cooperate. And let's say Johnny says, yeah, I do want to cooperate. Then when you take Johnny down to the fairs, Johnny becomes the queen for a date, right? You can admit to anything you want to, but if you lied to him, Johnny, everything you said, all the things you've admitted to can still be used against you and you're going to still end up getting charged. And so why am I talking about that with respect to the miscarriage indictment? Because if you go through some of the foulings, you know, and I went through a ton of, you know, all of you guys can see this stuff. For me and my Cracker Jack crew back at Think Tech, Hawaii Studios, Eric, we kind of set up this program for you so that you can, it's almost like you're being in law class. And so, you know, you got all these secret indictments that's been filed and buying motions and they contain a lot of information, right? And what they're telling, what they're saying is, look, this conspiracy, this enterprise, this miski enterprise, right? 11 people have been indicted. One of the charges is that the miski faces for murder is the death penalty. And we'll get to that in a minute. But all this is racketeering, right? RICO. And you say, and the reason why they're charging like this, and when you add a death penalty on, it's because the fairs are telling miski sooner or later. We got enough evidence to convict you. And what they're hoping is that he'll cooperate and then bring in, and some of the other 11 defendants will cooperate. And when they come down to cooperate, what the prosecutors want to know is, again, when they're queuing for a day, is don't tell us about people underneath of you. Tell us about some of these other individuals. How in the hell were you allowed to commit so many violent acts of crime for all these years? When you look at these indictments, right, and some of the charges, and some of the stuff that this miski and his little gang did, and you sit back and say, how could no one charge you? There was some, there was some serious assaults that happened in 2012. One of them, the allegation is that miski, I don't know if you guys remember this, but we had, we used to have a pro bowl here in Hawaii. And you know, the ballers, you know, the football players are coming to town and everybody's coming over here, you know, watch your pro bowl. And one night at this Elm Club that miski is a ledger of own club Elm. It's a ledger. He took a bottle and hit an NFL lineman over the head with it. That man could not play in the game the next day. And miski was charged with that charge dismissed. It's also been reported, and according to the federal filings that's been filed against miski in this case, that there was a similar incident with another individual. And that case is still pending since 2012. And so, you know, when the prosecutor sits, some of these 11 individuals down and they start asking questions like, Hey man, don't tell us about little Johnny, the guy that used to, you know, run nickel and dime bags of marijuana from one location. We don't want to hear about little Johnny. We want to hear about big Pete, right? Maybe a politician, maybe a prosecutor, maybe a high ranking police officer that allowed you and these other criminals that you charged with to exist so long without ever being prosecuted. How does that happen? And so that's going to be the pressure that's being put on. But let's get back to them. So they're indicted for what? Rico. And Rico was started in 19, said, what's Rico? That's the racketeering. And Rico was started, it's like conspiracy, right? Corruption. And it was started by the fairs in 1970 to come after the Godfathers, right? The mafia, the mob, because prior to that Rico conspiracy charge being found, each time, let's say Johnny, your rest, Johnny Needle knows, right? Mafia guy, right? For selling five grams, I mean, that's five kilos of cocaine. Now, you know Johnny Needle knows it's hooked up with the mafia, but you just busted him for selling some cocaine. And so you can't charge a conspiracy, right? You can only charge Johnny Needle knows. And then Johnny Needle knows normally is not going to say too much about the higher ups. And if he does, he's only going to know the next level. He ain't going to be able to go all the way back to the boss. Y'all remember the guy father, when they had those congressional hearings. And they sit out there, you know, the lawyers whispering in the guys ear, you know, hey, I take the fifth and all this other stuff. But to a large extent they're like, look, I don't know who the boss is. I just know my next level of Rico allows the government to come after an organization. It could be a legitimate corporation. It could be a fly by night conspiracy, or it could be, you know, what they call this is the miski enterprises. It could be legitimate businesses use as fronts to run or to be fronts for a drug business. And that's sort of what their legend here with miski, you know, they said they owned different companies, past control company and other types of companies throughout Oahu. And those were fronts for him to run drug business and other things. And he owns some night clubs too. So let me get back to this crack, this cracker jack. And I tell you, so what are some of the things that, so anyway, let's get back to Rico real quick. So part of that is that conspiracy. And what Rico does is once you charge an individual with Rico, you can also seize their assets. Now normally you're innocent until proven guilty, right? And what the prosecutors use Rico for was not only to round up the individuals, but to seize their assets. They did that with miski. Remember, last week they unsealed an indictment and they went around and arrested 11 individuals all at once. Why do they do that? Because again, when these cases, and I did a lot of these cases on the mainland, so what happens is the indictment gets sealed. What do you mean by sealed, Lawson? That means the grand jury has indicted you, but the prosecutors went to the judge and says, look, we don't want, we don't want this to be public. We want this sealed. So no one knows this has been filed. The defendants do not know they've been charged. They won't know they've been charged. They think they're free. And in this case, there was one indictment that had been sealed for over a year, right? From June of 2019, miski had received an indictment along with somebody else for selling cocaine. That one was sealed since June of 2019. It was unsealed last week, along with what they call a superseding indictment on this other conspiracy that we're talking about right now. But it's sealed, and it's sealed for a reason. It's sealed because we don't want anybody knowing, anybody being a defendant or witnesses knowing that they've been indicted because we're still doing other investigations. When that indictment becomes unsealed, when it becomes public like it did last week prior to it becoming unsealed, the prosecutors bring over to SWAT teams, what they did in this case is, and I found it interesting that they didn't use HPD in this case. It goes back to how is it that these individuals are allowed to engage in an organized crime for all these years, over a decade, and never be prosecuted? Could it be because they have officers on the payroll? We don't know. Could it be because they have prosecutors, Kath and K. Loha, who was just convicted last year, who's the last year had connections in miski and covering up for miski, right? Well, the other prosecutors, we don't know. But I found it, and you've seen those press conferences, you've seen them when the FBI and the federal prosecutor, they say, you know, we just unveiled this indictment, and we indicted this mass conspiracy, and we want to thank the local police department for their investigation, too. You didn't hear that last week's press conference. You didn't hear Kenji Price, the U.S. Attorney, hearing a wife say a damn thing about HPD, and that ain't by no mistake. But again, this is my humble opinion. So when they unseal the indictment, they arrest everybody at once, because we don't, and what happens is they don't want, like, you arrest 11 defendants. You arrest like three people in the morning. They're going, their families or other members of the conspiracies don't call the other individuals, and tell them, man, you need to get rid of whatever evidence you got. They just arrested these other three. They're probably coming after you, too. So evidence gets destroyed. The way you avoid that is you hit everybody at once. That means that you've got a mass amount of police officers, SWAT teams, all set up around wherever you think these 11 individuals are. And then at go time, maybe nine o'clock in the morning, maybe 5 a.m., whatever time they set, they hit at once. They execute search for wants in other areas, businesses, et cetera, all at once. So you can't call back to your business, say, destroy those tax records. All that happens at once, right? And so that's what happened last week when we saw all these guys rounded up. I think it was one individual that did not get arrested, but they eventually found him and arrested him also. All right. So going back to this point, now that they've been arrested, right, and you got that conspiracy and the RICO, right, all of them engage in the conspiracy and some of the stuff that they talk about, I'll just read it to you real quick because we don't have a lot of time here. The miski is charged with murder and aid in aid of racketeering and violation of whatever, you know, the cold miski is charged with conspiracy commit murder. Miski is charged with murder for hire. Miski is charged with kidnapping. Miski is charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Miski and defendant Stancil Lance, I can't pronounce Lance and Deha Moon and Harry and whatever Harry's last name is, are charged and murdered for hire conspiracy. Miski Stancil and Freitas are charged with conspiracy to use chemical weapons. Miski and defendant Preston commited or charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Miski stands on and viewing with our charges conspiring to commit assault and aid of racketeering. Miski and Stancil and Freitas are charged with using a chemical weapon. And I think there was allegations that, you know, there was a competitor nightclub that was competing with this club and that miski is alleged of own and somebody released some type of chemical gas inside this nightclub and people, you know, became sick because of it. So you got, you know, conspiracy to distribute 500 grams of cocaine. What's the conspiracy to commit murder? The young man that was killed because, and it's alleged that Miski entered into a murder for hire plot to kill a young man who was last seen in Hawaii kind, who miski believed was driving an automobile where miski's son was killed. And as a result, the feds have found a death penalty claim against miski in this indictment. Now you say, hey, hey, hey, whoa, wait a minute. Hawaii is a non death penalty state, Lawson. So you can't do that here. Yeah. The state of Hawaii does not have a death penalty. We got rid of death penalty in 1957. And the primary reason why we got rid of it is because of the way it was unevenly enforced against people of color. But that's another show. We're getting back to it. So how can affairs charge the death penalty in a state where we don't have it because the federal jurisdiction is separate from state jurisdiction? And so we've seen this happen. The last death penalty case federally was bought here was in 2014 against a soldier who was accused of killing his child along with his living, I think either his wife or his girlfriend, both of them were charged with the murder of his little girl. And he did not get the death penalty even though he was charged with it. He was not convicted for it. And so again, Attorney General Barr has to okay the local U.S. attorney, Kenji Price, and say, go ahead and smoking. Now, now when I say smoking, I mean giving the death penalty. Now, let me preface this by saying I'm against the death penalty. Right? But that's neither here nor there. The federal government is not against the death penalty. And William Barr over the last week or so has, you know, revved up. In fact, they just executed the first federal inmate since 2003. And I think they either did another one later on this past week or at least they're going to at least two or three more within the next couple of weeks. If it hasn't already been done, I didn't check one before I came on the air. But my point is this, Barr believes in the death penalty. And keep in mind that I believe, well, President Obama was the president the last time the death penalty was used here in 2014. So some people say, well, you know, it is an election and somehow Trump is not in office and Barr is gone. By this time, by the time this trial comes up next year, the death penalty may be out the table because we'll have, if Biden wins a Democratic AG, it didn't matter in 2014. And so I doubt if it matters when a new AG comes in or getting back to it. So how's that death penalty work? Here's what's odd. You know, you're entitled to a jury of your peers. How much time I got left? All right, so you're entitled to a jury of your peers. I got a few minutes, right? You heard that, right? Constitutional guarantee. But for, so a death penalty case has two phases. You had the guilt phase. Did you commit, so, you know, all these charges I just read in this indictment about miski murder for hire and all that, all those things trigger the death penalty. Kid, if you kidnap somebody and they died in the midst of your kidnap, let's say that you just want to hold them hostage and ransom them off. And so you kidnap them, you put some chloroform on your little sock and you put the sock over their nose and somehow you kidnap and put them in a trunk and you get to your hideout, you open a trunk and they did. And you turn around and you look at each other like, man, shit, we didn't mean to kill them. Well, since you kidnapped them and they died while you're kidnapping them, you can be subjected to death penalty. So, you know, miski's alleged to have gotten a few guys, right, hired them, purchased a boat for like 400 thousand dollars to take the kidnap this young man, take him out on the boat and then dump his body. That's the allegations coming out the indictment, right? And so that can subject you to death. And if Barr says to Kenji Price, the U.S. Attorney here, go ahead and smoking, then miski will have a trial and part of it will be two phases. You have a jury trial on whether or not you actually committed murder for hire, whether or not you actually was in a conspiracy to kidnap this person and then have them killed, period. If the jury finds you guilty of that, then you have a second trial for what? To see if you should die. And so how do you determine whether or not somebody gets to death penalty, right? The government has to show that based on the way that you committed the crime, the aggravating circumstances, those things that just aggravate the situation, just, right, outweigh what they call the mitigating. And so the defense lawyer is doing, they put on mitigation. I used to do death penalty cases in Ohio. Ohio still has a death penalty. Very few lawyers have done death penalty cases out here. Maybe those, maybe a couple of federal public defenders. And I think even then they had to fly people in because it takes, you should undergo some training before you do these, because if you get to the second phase, it's totally different from the first phase. And so now as a defense lawyer, you're trying to put on mitigation. What do you mean by mitigation? Where you're going to show how your client was raised? Well, he was raised in a broken home and he has an IQ level of 70 or whatever that mitigation is, right? And I don't know, Miski at all. But you know, from what we've read is that he lost his son. He was angry. You know what I mean? And he wasn't thinking straight and he was just whatever. He has some mental disabilities. And so even though he was cruel in the way he carried this out, you know, he struggles with whatever. Now that may not go, the jury may be like, hey, whatever, man, we're about to smoke your ass. We don't really care about none of that other stuff you are talking about, right? But the defense lawyer has to put on the mitigation. And then after the prosecution has to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that's aggravating factors. What's aggravating? According to the indictment, you, Miski, actually kept tabs on this man. You kept him close to you. You provided housing for him. You was real nice to him. You're sucking him in like a black widow spider, right? Before she kills her mate. And then you, Miski, according to the indictment, had another young lady take this young man's girlfriend out for like some type of massage and, you know, and all this stuff so that you could separate this young man from his girlfriend. And while you separated them, you had your friends that you hired for whatever amount of money. You went out and purchased a boat. You meticulously planned this. This was cold-blooded. So, yeah, that's aggravating. That's aggravating, right? That's an act, right? So if the prosecutor proves that and the jury buys it, then they can say death. And then the individual goes on to death row, which is in terror hope. So we got three minutes to go, according to my Cracker Jack crew. Hit it up by Eric. We probably got about 10 people working in the studio. Eric's in charge. So, yeah. So that's what happened there. Now, so what's the deal? You know, again, if Miski wants to avoid death and if the government wants to even deal with them. See, some of these cases, they like, look, we don't even care if you got information for us. We got enough information to indict other higher ups from your other co-conspirators, right? Because again, these guys act like they're tough guys. And I know they've been talking about this as organized crime in Hawaii and all that. I mean, but haven't done cases in Chicago, Nashville, and other cities since no, these guys, they just mean, right? Just mean, but they're not like meticulous or organized, right? Miski had, if you go through the stuff, he just had a temper allegedly. But what will happen is if they do want to deal with him, they will use that death tone as leverage. You don't want to die. Then you got to give up somebody. And it can't be somebody loitering you, Miski. If you at the top of your little enterprise, your criminal enterprise, we want somebody higher. What do you mean somebody higher? We want to know what other politicians, what other prosecutors, what high-ranking police officers cover for you? Because we find it hard to believe, Miski, that you could thrive in an area like this when you need all kind of information and stuff from the department of health, licenses, and stuff like that to run your business. How have you been able to do all these things? And nobody stops you. And I think all those things are going to come out. And again, I'm telling you, man, buckle up. Buckle up. This is just the beginning. This is not the end of anything. This is the beginning. Keep in mind, Keith Connichereau is still under federal grand jury, still investigating him. Miski's indictment came out before Connichereau. What's that mean? There are other people that got target letters. If you look at the news that was reported in this case, I think several other target letters went out the same day that the superseding indictment was unsealed. That means there's other individuals they're looking at. And so normally, and again, the way it works in the federal pond, down there in the federal pond, is little fish eats big fish. In other words, don't come to us talking about that you can give us information on people below you and expect a deal. You want to get out this death penalty? You want to get out this license? You got to bring us the people that's bigger than you. You got to eat the big fish. And that's how that's going to roll. So again, hey, this is the law with Lawson, the law dog bringing it to you raw. Because Jay Fidel said, hey, man, you want to do a show? I said, yeah, Jay, can I bring it to it? Can I give them the law raw? Can I feed it to them raw? Jay said, yeah. And so, hey, that's the way it is. With this, and again, right now, I think they're going to be, they being the co-conspirators in this case, the government has asked that they be detained without buying. And right now, I believe that that hearing is going on as I'm doing this show. My guess is that at least Miskie and a few others are going to be detained without buying. And I would not be surprised if all 11 get no bond, no bail. And again, we can talk about what is bond, what is bail, what's it for in another show. But Eric is telling me, I got to go. He said, I got to go. So until next week, this is the law with Lawson and I'm signing off. See you then.