Posted on: Thursday, February 10, 2005

State agrees to pay $1.2M in acquitted detainees' case

By Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writer

The state has agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle a federal class-action lawsuit that sought to stop a practice of detaining people who were returned to jail despite being found not guilty or ordered released by the courts, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The lawsuit was filed in December 2001 by the ACLU on behalf of nine people who alleged they were shackled, placed in court holding cells, taken back to the O'ahu Community Correctional Center and bodily searched after being acquitted. The ACLU said the state continued to hold some people for days and sometimes weeks.

The Department of Public Safety, which was one of the defendants, said at the time that the acquitted inmates were returned to OCCC to clear routine background checks and collect belongings before final court approval to be released.

But in January 2002, Circuit Judge Gail Nakatani ruled that people found not guilty should be allowed to leave the courtroom on their own and pick up their belongings at their convenience. Nakatani said the release should be immediate, unless the defendant is being held on another matter.