In 2022, the Hawaiʻi Legislature increased the number of judges on the state’s Intermediate Court of Appeals from six to seven.

Karl Rhoads, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sponsored that legislation because a large case backlog had dogged the ICA for years.

With the addition of a sixth associate judge along with one chief judge, the backlog has come down. But it can still take at least two years to bring a case before the appellate court, which is the last judicial step before the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court.

As of June 30, 764 cases were pending in the ICA, down from 859 the year before.

Rhoads is now pushing a bill to add a seventh judge, which he thinks would help with the backlog. But the ICA, which welcomed the sixth position just four years ago, says it doesn’t want any more judges at this time.

“While we’re thankful for the current bill, we think it would be prudent to wait and see what that landscape looks like before adding another judge to the court,” Randy Pinal, staff attorney for the ICA, told the Judiciary Committee last month.

Rhoads was not satisfied with the response.

“In the modern world, two years is a really long time,” Rhoads told Pinal at the hearing. “And ideally — or maybe not ideally, but just sort of realistically — we should be able to turn out appellate decisions in six months, nine months, something like that. And I haven’t heard anybody say that that’s a realistic possibility under the current structure.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously approved Rhoads’ bill, Senate Bill 2446, which made it through Senate Ways and Means Committee and then the full Senate in late February. It awaits consideration in the House.

Rhoads stripped out the $494,814 in SB 2446 to pay for the judgeship, a judicial assistant and two law clerks, as well as for equipment, books and furniture for the new associate judge’s chambers. The funding was to begin with the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Rhoads told Civil Beat Wednesday that the money could be appropriated at a later date but the state’s current budget situation is strained. Especially with the recent war in Iran, he said, “the finances aren’t looking that great.”

He still thinks the ICA needs another judge, as soon as possible.

“My argument is that, in a world where you can order a car in 5 minutes, two years is just an incredibly long period of time,” he said.

One Judge Down

The ICA says it supports the intent of SB 2446 but believes it has made significant progress in reducing the backlog since the sixth position was added four years ago. That position is currently vacant, however. Gov. Josh Green has nominated Dan Gluck, and Rhoads said his confirmation hearing could come in the next few weeks.

“And despite not being at full strength for most of that time, despite an increase in the number of appeals filed, despite an increase in the number of motions filed, we still managed to terminate more cases last year than we have in the previous 10 years,” Pinal told Rhoads at last month’s hearing.

That’s because, Pinal said, the ICA “reallocated resources internally and implemented some temporary operational changes” in January 2024 that Chief Judge Karen Nakasone has made permanent.

“So we expect our case termination numbers will increase exponentially when we fill the current vacancy, which we hope will happen during this legislative session,” he said.

At the time of the restructuring, 270 pending cases that had been assigned to its the ICA for two or more years. Pinal said the ICA had made a “significant effort, a concerted effort” to clear the backlog of the oldest cases.

Nakasone told the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing that she hoped to get the ICA backlog down to no more than a two-year delay. At the Senate hearing Pinal told Rhoads that a six-to-nine month response time was not realistic under the court’s current rules and deadlines.

“It’s at least 225 days before a case can go to the merit panel, and that’s assuming nobody asked for an extension of time,” he said, adding that requests for extensions of time are common.

Rhoads is not the only one concerned about the ICA backlog.

Hayley Cheng, first deputy with the Office of the Public Defender, told Rhoads her office would like to see more prompt resolution of appellate matters “for both the defendants as well as the victims. Cases pending for lengthy periods of time do not provide the finality that all parties need, and obviously, oftentimes, the cases go to the next step from the ICA to the Supreme Court, which is another additional delay in the appellate process.”

Cheng also said the Office of Public Defender had been encouraged by some of the changes the ICA has implemented and would defer to what it thinks is best for its operations.

SB 2446 has been referred to the House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee. Chair David Tarnas said Wednesday he has just begun reviewing Senate measures and could not comment on the ICA bill.

Should the bill pass the Legislature and become law, it will serve somewhat as a closing of a career circle for Rhoads, who is retiring from the Senate later this year. He was a summer volunteer clerk for then-ICA Judge Corinne Watanabe way back in 1995, when Rhoads recalls the backlog was three to four years.