Case Notes

• Publication year: 2022

CASE NOTES

Supreme Court Criminal

State v. Jardine, No. SCWC-20-0000153, April 29, 2022, (Nakayama, J.). The Hawaii Supreme Court determined whether a charging document alleging that a defendant committed second-degree assault by intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causing substantial bodily injury must provide the defendant with the statutory definition of "substantial bodily injury." Where the definition of an offense includes generic terms, it must state the species and descend to particulars. Here, the term "substantial bodily injury" is a generic term. A charging document must therefore identify the species of "substantial bodily injury" alleged and provide a defendant with particulars. The ICA therefore correctly determined that the State of Hawaii should have provided the statutory definition of "substantial bodily injury" in the charging document at issue.

Election

Hicks v. The 2021 Hawaii Reapportionment Commission and Its Members, No. SCPW-22-0000078, May 9, 2022, (Ed-dins, J. with McKenna, J. concurring separately and dissenting, with whom Wilson, J., joins; and Wilson J., also dissenting separately). Article IV of the Hawaii Constitution concerns reapportionment, the process through which the state's legislators are distributed and its political districts redrawn. It provides that every ten years a nine-member reapportionment commission (the "commission") shall determine the total number of state representatives to which each basic island unit is entitled. Haw. Const. art. IV, §§ 1, 2 & 4. This determination is made "using the total number of permanent residents in each of the basic island units" and with the "method of equal proportions." Id. Once the commission determines how many representatives each basic island unit is entitled to, it must apportion those representatives within the basic island units. Id. at § 6. If there have been population shifts in the decade since the last reapportionment, the commission must redraw district lines to ensure that the "number of permanent residents per member in each district is as nearly equal to the average for the basic island unit as practicable." Id. The commission is also tasked with redrawing congressional district lines. Id. at § 9. Article IV, section 6 provides eight criteria that the commission "shall be guided by" in effecting redistricting. The sixth is that: "[w]here practicable, [state] representative districts shall be wholly included within [state] senatorial districts" (the constitutional district within district guideline). Id. at § 6. Hawaii Revised Statutes § 25-2(b)(5) (Supp. 2021) (the statutory district within district guideline) similarly requires that "[w]here practicable, state legislative [representative and senatorial] districts shall be wholly included within [U.S.] congressional districts." On January 28, 2022, the 2021 Hawaii commission approved the 2021 Final Legislative Reap-portionment Plan ("the Plan"). The Plan places 33 of 51 house districts (64.7%) into two or more senate districts. It also places four Oahu house districts and five Oahu senate...