Posted on: Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Delay granted in pretrial hearing on witness tampering
By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer
A lawyer who represents the son of longtime Hawai'i labor leader and labor advocate Anthony "Tony" Rutledge yesterday asked a federal magistrate judge to put off a pretrial hearing on federal witness tampering charges because he expects several other people to be indicted in the case.
Michael Green, who represents Aaron Rutledge, did not say during the hearing or later who else he believes may be indicted in the case.
But during the court session, Green told Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang that there had been a flurry of activity recently by federal officials involved in the case and that a number of subpoenas had been issued recently requiring several people to appear before a federal grand jury.
Thomas Krysa, of the Justice Department's Tax Division, who is prosecuting the case along with fellow special U.S. Attorney Edward Groves, did not object to the continuance.
Chang rescheduled the pretrial hearing for Sept. 2. The trial on the witness-tampering charge is scheduled to begin the week of Sept. 16. Rutledge has pleaded not guilty.
Tony Rutledge did not respond yesterday to a request to comment on the matter.
Aaron Rutledge was indicted on the charges in October 2002. The indictment did not spell out what the federal grand jury was investigating when the alleged witness tampering incident took place. It does say that the alleged offense took place Oct. 30, 1997.
That was the same day federal investigators searched the Kahala home of Art Rutledge, Tony's father, and the headquarters of two organizations he once headed.
The agents were armed with subpoenas when they visited the offices of Unity House and Local 5 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. They spent several hours examining computer files. At the same time, other agents were at Art Rutledge's home going through records in a file cabinet. They later reported finding bundles of cash stored at his home.
Art Rutledge died Sept. 22, 1997, at the age of 90. He was the retired leader of Local 5 and the Hawai'i Teamsters union and founded Unity House, an umbrella organization for the two unions, in 1951.
