Advertiser Staff
Deputy sheriff pleads not guilty
A deputy sheriff pleaded not guilty yesterday to a charge he pulled his gun at Honolulu airport and threatened to shoot another deputy in the foot.
Christopher Kimsel, a sergeant, is charged with terroristic threatening in the first degree, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Kimsel is free on $1,000 bond.
Sidney Hayakawa of the Department of Public Safety said Kimsel is accused of pointing his gun at sheriff’s deputy Robert Searle on Aug. 21.
Ex-Sen. Ige gets nonjury trial
A Circuit Court judge yesterday granted former state Sen. Marshall Ige’s request to waive his right to a jury trial on misdemeanor campaign spending charges. Instead, a judge will hear the case in District Court.
Ige’s trial date also was pushed back from Feb. 5 to March 27. Last year, Ige was charged with seven campaign spending violations for allegedly not reporting a campaign expense, not listing a campaign contribution and making false statements to investigators.
Ige has maintained he is innocent. "The state will see I was right all this time," he said last week.
Ige also faces a five-count criminal indictment accusing him of allegedly taking $30,000 in 1998 from a California couple in exchange for a promise to expunge their daughter’s Hawai‘i criminal record. And authorities say Ige threatened a Vietnamese orchid farmer with eviction unless he paid him $7,000. Ige said he will plead not guilty.
Former leader off union ballot
Ballots will be mailed out today, as planned, to approximately 2,000 Verizon Hawai‘i employees to elect officers of the union that represents them, but the name of former union leader George Waialeale will not be listed.
Waialeale, who claimed his name was improperly kept off the ballot, had sought a federal court order that would have prevented ballots without his name from being mailed.
He was told in December by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers headquarters in Washington that he could not run for an elective office in the Local 1357 IBEW elections because of 1998 charges related to spending about $80,000 of union money without proper authorization or documentation.
The union’s international office upheld the charges and barred Waialeale from running for office for five years. Wai-
aleale also claimed he had never received a fair hearing on the allegations against him and was not allowed to appeal the decision.
But U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway yesterday denied Waialeale’s request to have his name added to the ballot.
Lawyer indicted in taxes case
Honolulu lawyer Riccio M. Tanaka was indicted by a federal grand jury yesterday on charges of failing to file personal income tax returns from 1995 through 1997 and failing to turn over to the federal government money withheld from an employee’s pay for income taxes, Social Security and Medicare.
The maximum penalty for failing to turn over the money withheld from the employee’s pay is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Tanaka also faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine on each of the three counts against him for failing to file his individual tax returns.
The Hawai‘i Supreme Court suspended Tanaka from practicing law in December 1998 for failing to cooperate in an investigation of his professional conduct, according to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel.
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