HONOLULU (CN) — A federal jury on Friday found former Honolulu prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro, businessman Dennis Mitsunaga and co-defendants not guilty on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and bribery.
The verdict caps the nearly two-month trial in the high-profile corruption case. Prosecutors accused Mitsunaga along with four employees at his engineering firm, Mitsunaga and Associates, of paying about $50,000 in bribes disguised as campaign donations to Kaneshiro.
Prosecutors said Kaneshiro then went after Laurel Mau, an ex-employee who filed a sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit against the company, as a favor to the firm.
In closing arguments, attorneys from both sides expressed gratitude to jurors for the massive task of weighing testimony from over 40 witnesses presented during the trial. The quirky panel of 14 jurors has been coordinating outfits by color most days throughout the duration of trial.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess, sitting by designation from the District of Alaska, has presided over the case since U.S. District Judge Michael Seabright recused himself in January. An FBI investigation uncovered Sheri Tanaka, a co-defendant in the case and an ex-lawyer for the firm, was reportedly trying to arrange hits on Seabright and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat, the lead prosecutor.
Mitsunaga had also separately faced charges for witness tampering and obstructing justice, and was accused of trying to manipulate the testimony of his longtime friend and former Honolulu police officer Rudy Alivado to aid his defense. The 80-year-old businessman had been in custody since his arrest in April, but was released Friday following the verdict.
The jury heard two days of closing statements in which defense attorneys for Mitsunaga, Kaneshiro, and Aaron Fujii, chief operating officer of Mitsunaga & Associates, said prosecutors failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove bribery charges.
Crystal Glendon, the attorney for Sheri Tanaka, accused the state of perverting the spirit of aloha by mischaracterizing Hawaiian cultural practices of gift-giving and food-sharing as sinister acts. She told jurors the prosecutors ”cherry-picked the facts that fit their tall tale. They couldn’t drop the case after years of investigation, so they stitched together a story, Frankenstein style — this voicemail, those emails.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.