At Lihue District Court, on April 8, 1969, Judge Norito Kawakami found 13 hippies guilty of vagrancy at Hanamaulu Beach Park and sentenced each of them to 90 days in jail. Additionally, Kawakami directed that their sentences be suspended for
At Lihue District Court, on April 8, 1969, Judge Norito Kawakami found 13 hippies guilty of vagrancy at Hanamaulu Beach Park and sentenced each of them to 90 days in jail.
Additionally, Kawakami directed that their sentences be suspended for one year at any time they chose to leave Kauai.
The people sentenced were Victor and Sandy Schaube, Webb and Carol Ford, John and Teri Ann Rush, Kirby and Wendy Nunn, George Berg Jr., Penelope Berg, Thomas Carver, Jackie Dixon and Gail Pickolz.
On April 18, after serving 10 days in the old Wailua jail across from the golf course, the hippies were freed on bail of $1 each set by Kawakami, pending a May 6 hearing on a request to change their original pleas from guilty to not guilty.
Their release followed an informal meeting between Kawakami and Honolulu American Civil Liberties Union official Richard P. Schulze Jr., during which Schulze made the request.
While free on bail awaiting the hearing, they stayed on Howard Taylor’s private property at Haena.
At the May 6 hearing before Kawakami, ACLU attorney Brook Hart pled their case, while assistant attorney and future mayor of Kauai, Eduardo Malapit, represented Kauai County.
Hart informed the court that the defendants were asking to change their plea because they had not been represented by an attorney when they pled guilty.
Malapit argued that they had been afforded the opportunity to be represented by counsel prior to pleading guilty, but had chosen not to avail themselves of one.
In June 1969, when Kawakami decided that all but one of the 13 hippies had the right to withdraw their guilty pleas, only two — Victor and Sandy Schaube — were present in court.
The other 11 hippies had left Kauai.
Victor Schaube, who said he knew what he was doing when he had pled guilty, was denied this right. Kawakami then suspended the balance of Schaube’s sentence for six months.
