The state and counties should eliminate arrest warrants for traffic violations and misdemeanor crimes older than five years to help clear a backlog of nearly 74,000 unserved warrants, according to a bill moving through the Legislature.

The Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee passed the measure yesterday. Committee chairman Sen. Clayton Hee, D-23rd (Kane'ohe, Kahuku), who introduced the bill, said taking this step would eliminate old and stale arrest warrants that have little, if any, chance of ever being served.

More than 50,000 of the outstanding warrants involve traffic cases. Some 13,000 involve misdemeanor criminal offenses.

Representatives of the state judiciary, the attorney general and two county prosecutors objected to the measure or to portions of it in testimony before the committee.

Eliminating older warrants will not solve the problem, opponents said.

A task force studied the backlogged warrants issue last year after a series of reports in The Advertiser about the large volume of unserved warrants. The group considered the idea of "limiting the life of warrants but did not adopt it as a recommendation because the group could not reach a consensus," Deputy Attorney General Lance Goto said in written testimony.

The task force report, released last month, recommended solutions including creation of a centralized, automated warrant system and adopting a "stopper" system that would prevent individuals wanted on arrest warrants from renewing driver's licenses or receiving tax returns. The task force said many of the major recommendations would require more money and additional study.

Hee said eliminating warrants for less serious crimes is the only way to quickly reduce the backlog. Hee said he did not believe hiring more state sheriffs or police officers would significantly cut into the warrants backlog, and he said a new judiciary computer system that has been contributing to the warrants problem is "irrevocably broken."

State judiciary official Walter Ozawa disputed that description of the system, called JIMS, saying the new computers and software are still being fine-tuned and that fixes to the "electronic warrants" portion of JIMS are planned.

Ozawa said in written testimony that the bill as written would only move outstanding warrants from active to inactive status and would create a great deal more work for "the already overburdened staff of the courts and prosecutor's office."

The current total of 74,000 warrants does not include some 37,000 other warrants that were "purged" from law enforcement computers before November 2005. That purge was undertaken by county prosecutors working in cooperation with judiciary officials.

The committee agreed to exclude arrest warrants in certain types of misdemeanor domestic violence cases from the five-year expiration requirement.

State Public Defender Jack Tonaki told the committee he believes as many as half of all the outstanding warrants involve people who are now imprisoned or who were behind bars at some point after the arrest warrants were issued.

Many of these individuals want to clear up the outstanding warrants while they are incarcerated but agencies have not found a way to identify them and arrange court hearings to clear off the warrants, Tonaki said.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.