Trespassing charges are dropped in the case that stemmed from a burial protest

Kauai police brought charges this week against a Kauai journalist for trespassing during a protest last month against construction of a house on a site containing Hawaiian burials.

But when Joan Conrow showed up at KPD headquarters to be arrested Wednesday night, Kauai Police Chief Darryl Perry told her to go home — and then had prosecutors rescind the charges Thursday.

Conrow, a former Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser journalist who wrote a story for the Honolulu Weekly about the oceanfront home being built atop 30 graves, was originally charged with simple trespass, a petty misdemeanor.

But Perry said yesterday that he looked at the arrest warrant and decided that the arrest raised First Amendment issues.

“She was covered by the First Amendment,” Perry added. Her presence “didn’t sit within the criteria of criminal trespass.”

Three protesters have been arrested for refusing to leave the home site, on Kauai’s North Shore fronting Naue Point. Three more warrants have been issued, Perry added.

“We are focused on those who chained themselves together,” said Perry. “I want to make sure we are doing the right thing.”

Conrow’s attorney, Daniel Hempey, said that Perry’s “prompt corrective action averted” what could have been a dangerous precedent.

Since there were a number of reporters, both print and television, that entered the home site, owned by California businessman Joseph Brescia, the choice of picking Conrow as the lone reporter arrested could have been construed as censorship.

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(Source: Tom Finnegan, Honolulu Star-Bulletin)