NATIONWIDE PROBLEM

O'ahu is not alone in dealing with what is a costly, potentially dangerous backlog of warrants. The Neighbor Islands and other localities across the country face similar stores of unserved arrest orders.

"It's a dirty little secret," said David A. Harris, a criminal justice expert and law professor at University of Toledo College of Law. Jurisdictions nationwide have invested insufficient effort and manpower in catching those wanted on warrants — and those being sought know it, Harris said.

The number of Hawai'i's warrants, Harris says, appears to be typical of the problem facing most other states. Delaware, for example, a state with roughly the same population as O'ahu, faced 70,000 unserved "writs," which are similar to warrants, before it recently took steps to reduce its backlog.

Judiciary officials downplay the public safety concern, noting that most of those wanted on warrants arise out of driving violations; an estimated 1,500 deal with felonies.

"The majority of traffic bench warrants were issued for failure to appear in court for minor or nonserious traffic infractions, and many of the persons who committed these offenses may be described as irresponsible scoff-laws, rather than dangerous criminals," said Marsha Kitagawa, state Judiciary spokeswoman.

But for the mother of a 7-year-old boy killed by a drunken driver, the unserved traffic warrants are particularly disturbing.

Earl Franca Jr., had at least five outstanding traffic warrants when he struck Ethan Thomas as the boy crossed Farrington Highway near Kahe Point five years ago.

"It's appalling," says Patricia Thomas, 39, of Kalihi, when she recently learned from The Advertiser that Franca was never arrested on pending warrants for speeding and other citations prior to the boy's death. "The state should have caught him."

But even if officials catch up with defendants, there is no guarantee they will be held to account.

A practice not widely known even in the legal community allows law enforcement officials to turn down extradition of felony defendants who have left the state, largely because it is costly to return them. About 250 charged with felonies dating to the 1980s have escaped prosecution by leaving the Islands, The Advertiser found.

The cases underscore a continuing community dilemma: balancing limited resources against the demand for justice.

MOUNTING WARRANTS

Bench warrants are issued by the courts to secure the arrest of men and women for several reasons: they are charged by grand juries with felony offenses, have failed to show up for criminal proceedings, have violated the terms of probation or have failed to pay court-ordered fines and fees.

The warrants are issued in only a fraction of the traffic and other criminal cases processed by state courts each year. Many offenders have more than one bench warrant outstanding, some because they didn't answer an earlier warrant. Once issued, the warrants are transferred to state sheriffs and police, who must find the individuals named and formally serve the order.

State officials acknowledge the growing warrants problem, and worry about the message it sends to the community.

"I believe that respect for the rule of law is decreased where arrest warrants of any kind go unserved for long periods of time," said Attorney General Mark Bennett, the state's chief law enforcement officer.

But Bennett has called only for a task force to look into the problem and neither the state Department of Public Safety, which oversees the sheriffs, nor the Honolulu police have proposed more funding to specifically address the issue.

The overriding reason is that additional personnel to serve the warrants would be expensive.

According to Lt. Frank Dela Rosa of the Sheriff Division, a qualified warrants deputy costs the state around $50,000 a year in salary, training, equipment and fringe benefit expenses.

Based on the success rate of recent warrant sweeps by sheriffs, it would take 20 full-time deputies at least 2 1/2 years to serve the traffic warrants outstanding on O'ahu at a cost of $2.5 million. The final bill could be lowered by fines and fees collected from traffic offenders but raised by the costs of trying and imprisoning convicted offenders.

More police would be similarly costly. All police officers are expected to watch out for those wanted on warrants and to serve them when defendants are located. But the price tag of a strengthened police effort isn't clear.

Honolulu police Chief Boisse Correa said his department does what it can with limited resources, targeting "persons who pose the greatest risk to the community, such as repeat offenders who are actively committing crimes."

The department "would welcome additional staffing" Correa said, but added, "we do not anticipate any increase at this time."

BACKLOG 'UNACCEPTABLE'

Coordination has also proven frustrating for all involved. Because three agencies deal with warrants — the courts, sheriffs and police — the process inevitably breaks down. The sheriffs say they don't get the issued warrants from the Judiciary in a timely manner; the police sometimes see pending warrants in the computer system that can't be served because they lack hard copies; and the courts may turn away people with warrants even when they show up at the Judiciary's door, saying it is the sheriffs and police who are responsible for serving the orders.

A new computer system, the Judiciary Information Management System, known as JIMS, will greatly improve issuing and tracking bench warrants once it is can be fully operated, said Corinne Watanabe, Intermediate Court of Appeals judge and co-chairwoman of the Judiciary's Executive Committee on Technology and Information Management.

Still, the new efficiencies promised by the system won't kick in for at least another three months and only if the Legislature approves changes to existing state law, according to Wata-nabe. Meanwhile, 3,900 new traffic court arrest warrants ordered by O'ahu District Court judges since the JIMS computer system went online in early November had not been sent by the courts to sheriffs by early January, court officials said. The new warrants may be transferred by mid-April or earlier, according to Judiciary spokeswoman Kitagawa.

Honolulu City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle isn't happy with the delay.

"All (JIMS) does is serve to aggravate an already existing and unacceptable backlog," he said.

'IRRESPONSIBLE ADULTS'

Nearly 51,000 of the unserved O'ahu warrants for traffic cases are stored in court computers or held by the Sheriff Division, filed in nine cabinets in a state Capitol basement office. Honolulu police say they have more than 10,500 warrants for misdemeanor and felony cases filed at their Beretania Street headquarters.

All of these unserved warrants mean that thousands of people, some of whom could pose a threat to public safety, are walking the streets and driving the roadways without restraint.

Police make a special effort to serve warrants for the most serious felonies, and the sheriffs recently increased periodic sweeps to serve a few dozen warrants at a time. Four sweeps conducted in November and December led to enforcement of 99 warrants and the arrests of 47 people, the Sheriff Division's Dela Rosa said.

Nonetheless, law violators soon find that if they ignore the warrants, there's a good chance they won't get nabbed unless stopped by law enforcement for another reason, such as a traffic violation.

Wahiawa resident Rebekah Parsons, 22, recently paid $225 for her traffic case, including a $50 collection fee for a bench warrant issued after she earlier failed to show up in court.

"That's a lot of irresponsible adults," she said about the outstanding warrants. "If they can live with the fact that it might come around and get them, that's their choice. But I don't want that on my shoulders."

Others, however, have no qualms about walking away from their fines and court dates.

"It does undermine confidence in the justice system as a whole when people find out that lots of folks don't take their obligation to show up and face the consequences of their actions seriously," law professor Harris said. "And we don't make them do that."

WRONG MESSAGE

The public pays for unserved warrants in more ways than may seem obvious.

Motorists who avoid facing the consequences of their criminal traffic citations may create other hazards on the streets, drive up the cost of insurance for law-abiding drivers, and commit even more serious crimes.

Thousands of the warrants involve charges against motorists accused of driving without licenses or insurance.

Michael Onofrietti, AIG Hawaii Insurance Co. vice president, was "a little bit stunned" by the high numbers of outstanding warrants.

Industry studies show that people who drive uninsured tend to get into more accidents. "So it's an obvious public safety issue," he said.

It can also be costly to consumers. The best predictor of whether someone is likely to get into an accident is whether they consciously obey traffic laws, said Tim Dayton, GEICO general manager in Hawai'i.

"To the extent that there are people out there who should be arrested but aren't, that costs everyone else more money," he said.

Law professor Harris doesn't believe the unserved traffic warrants pose a major public safety problem because many might have forgotten about the tickets or have other excuses.

But at least one Honolulu attorney believes this broken warrants system serves only to escalate crimes.

"If an individual feels that the judicial system is asleep in allowing him to get away with criminal behavior — even criminal behavior that seems relatively not serious in that person's mind; not driving with insurance, driving without a license — then it follows in that person's mind that he can get away with more serious behavior, such as driving while drunk," says attorney Richard Turbin, who represented Harold Keith Thomas, Ethan's father.

Shortly after 8 p.m. on June 8, 2001, Ethan, his father, brother and sister got off a bus and began crossing Farrington Highway to go to the beach. They planned to celebrate Ethan's seventh birthday of a week earlier.

Harold Thomas, 58, could not be located to comment for this story. But according to his 2002 deposition in a civil case, he and his son were holding hands as they walked near the highway median when they were struck by Earl Franca Jr.'s car.

"As I was hit by the car and felt him pull away, his hand pull away, and seen the car pass, and Ethan was gone," he said.

The father said he managed to get to his son and place his face next to the boy.

"He said, 'Help me, Daddy,' " the father recalled. "I said, 'I can't,' and he told me, 'It's OK. I love you,' and died."

Franca's blood alcohol content registered at 0.16, twice the legal limit, according to police reports. He was speeding in his wife's uninsured 1976 Toyota Corolla, traveling at more than 60 mph in a 35-mph zone.

At the time, Franca had traffic warrants dating as far back as 1995. He had been charged with speeding, failing to have insurance, overtaking a vehicle on the right shoulder, fraudulent use of license plates and driving without a license, traffic records show. In one case, Franca had admitted guilt, but made only partial payment of court-ordered fines.

He was served with his warrants only after he surrendered following a negligent homicide indictment for Ethan's death in 2004. The traffic charges were later dropped because of the age of the cases and because Franca repaid his outstanding fine, according to court records.

Franca, a 32-year-old laborer from Wai'anae, pleaded no contest to the negligent homicide charge. He is currently serving a maximum 10-year prison term at Tallahatchie Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Miss. He declined to comment for this story.

According to court files, Ethan's father and mother, now divorced, sued the state; city; Franca and his wife; and Nancy's Kitchen, a Waipi'o Gentry restaurant where Franca had been drinking.

The suit alleged the state negligently designed the highway, the city failed to place a crosswalk near the bus stop and Nancy's Kitchen served Franca alcohol. Ethan's family recently received a $95,000 settlement — $5,000 each from the state and city, $65,000 from the restaurant and $20,000 from insurance.

The Francas did not contribute to the settlement; they defaulted. Patricia Thomas' lawyer, Christopher Dias, said the Francas did not have assets that the Thomases could collect.

No one can say if Ethan's death could have been avoided had Franca been brought before the courts on his warrants. But Patricia Thomas believes had Franca been arrested on his warrants, the chances of the tragedy happening could have been reduced.

"It might have slowed him down," said Patricia Thomas.

Reach Ken Kobayashi at kkobayashi@honoluluadvertiser.com and Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.