Hawaii Supreme Court Treats Roberts Court Rulings as ‘White Noise’
The Hawaii Supreme Court did more than order a new trial in a decades-old criminal case. It also used the ruling to fire off a sweeping attack on the United States Supreme Court.
The case is Granillo v. State of Hawaii. It centers on Daniel R. Granillo, who was convicted in July 1990 of kidnapping, two counts of first-degree sexual assault, and attempted first-degree sexual assault. He was sentenced to 40 years.
The allegations came from a woman identified as Laura Price, a pseudonym. She testified that Granillo abducted her from a Maui shopping center parking lot, held a knife to her neck, drove her to the Kahului breakwater, and sexually assaulted her. She later escaped by jumping from a moving car and getting help.
At trial, prosecutors leaned heavily on Price’s testimony. They also used forensic evidence from FBI hair and fiber expert Wayne Oakes. Oakes testified that a hair found in Granillo’s car was “consistent with” coming from Price and had been forcibly removed. He also said fibers from Price’s clothing were “consistent with” fibers from Granillo’s car seat cover and carpet.
That kind of forensic testimony was widely accepted at the time. But years later, the science came under serious scrutiny. In 2017, the Justice Department notified Hawaii prosecutors that the FBI had reviewed older cases and found Oakes’ testimony overstated what microscopic hair and fiber analysis could actually prove.
Granillo then filed a post-conviction petition. The Hawaii Supreme Court sided with him, expanded a state constitutional “false evidence” rule, said prosecutors did not need to know the evidence was false, and found a “reasonable possibility” that the testimony helped lead to the conviction. The court ordered a new trial.
That ruling alone would have drawn attention. But the opinion, authored by Associate Justice Todd Eddins, went much further.
The court said Hawaii interprets its constitution “independently, untethered from the Supreme Court’s analysis of the United States Constitution.” It also described federal precedent as “white noise.”
The opinion included unusually political language aimed at the Roberts Court. On page 74, it stated: “The Supreme Court’s imperious ideology does not stop at due process. The same jurisprudence has cratered democracy itself.
Start with the Voting Rights Act.
The Roberts Court did what Congress never would. It rewrote the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a cornerstone of American civil rights, democratically enacted and repeatedly reauthorized. Shelby County v. Holder, began the judicial demolition, inventing a textually unsupported equal-sovereignty fiction and striking down preclearance on a hunch that the law worked too well. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee,fabricated ‘guideposts’ nowhere in Section 2 to greenlight racial discrimination in voting. Louisiana v. Callais, buried what remained of the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. Pretend law for a real statute.
The Court then ditched its own thirty-two day default for releasing decisions and hustled out its judgment mid-primary, a favor granted over objection only twice in twenty-five years.”
On page 75, the opinion went even harder: “The Roberts Court sees only white. It refuses to acknowledge who the Equal Protection Clause was written to protect. The freed people, their descendants, and all others denied equal citizenship. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.”
That is not the kind of language Americans usually expect from a state supreme court opinion. Courts can disagree. They can chart their own path under a state constitution. But accusing the nation’s highest court in such blunt ideological terms is a major escalation.
The language drew attention online, including from critics who said the Hawaii court had crossed a line from legal analysis into political messaging.
https://x.com/Eric_Schmitt/status/2078179058978799997?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The practical result is simple: Granillo gets a new trial. The broader fight is much bigger. Hawaii’s highest court is openly signaling that it will not treat the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutional analysis as controlling when interpreting Hawaii’s constitution.
That may be legal in some state-law contexts. But the tone matters. And this opinion reads less like a narrow ruling about forensic evidence and more like a manifesto against the Roberts Court.