A jury returned a not guilty verdict Friday in a yearslong bribery case against Honolulu's former top prosecutor and five people associated with the engineering and architectural firm Mitsunaga & Associates.
Federal prosecutors had alleged that Mitsunaga & Associates employees conspired to bribe then-Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro with campaign donations in exchange for Kaneshiro's prosecution of a former company employee.
The indictment alleged that the CEO and four employees contributed more than $45,000 to Kaneshiro’s reelection campaigns between 2012 and 2016.
All six defendants pleaded not guilty in 2022 to one count of conspiracy to defraud the City and County of Honolulu and one count of conspiracy to intimidate the former employee, Laurel Mau, to prevent her from exercising her rights by filing a civil rights lawsuit against the firm.
The jury took two days to deliberate and found all six not guilty on both counts.
The first count would have carried a maximum penalty of five years in prison; the second count 10 years.
The defendants were Kaneshiro, Mitsunaga & Associates CEO Dennis Kuniyuki Mitsunaga, Aaron Shunichi Fujii, Chad Michael McDonald, Terri Ann Otani, and former firm attorney Sheri Jean Tanaka.
"I feel vindicated,” Kaneshiro told reporters after the verdict. “But how am I going to get back my reputation?"
"It put not only me, our office, but put other citizens under this cloud of suspicion that we were criminals, we're bad. And we didn't do nothing wrong," Kaneshiro said.
Mitsunaga, who was jailed during the trial because of witness tampering allegations, was ordered to be released after the verdict.
U.S. Senior District Judge Timothy Burgess of Alaska has been presiding over the case after the unexpected recusal of Judge Michael Seabright in January, a month before the trial was scheduled to begin.
Burgess ruled in February that the trial wouldn't be postponed further despite an investigation into allegations one of the defendants threatened Seabright, which prompted his recusal.
Prosecutors didn't immediately comment on the verdict Friday.
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