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Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Ian Lind’s blog, , and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

The Miske jury on Friday found the former owner of Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, and a string of other smaller businesses, guilty of 13 of the 16 charges he was facing.

Three charges had been dismissed earlier, one withdrawn by the government, and two others successfully challenged by Michael Miske’s attorneys.

So what are the charges where the jury found him not guilty?

> Count 4. Murder-for-Hire Conspiracy Resulting in Death (18 u.s.c. § 1958).

In short, the government charged “MISKE agreed with others to pay cash and other things of pecuniary value in exchange for the murder of Johnathan Fraser … which arrangements depended in part upon communications by cellular telephones operating on interstate networks, and which resulted in the death of Fraser on or about July 30, 2016.”

What’s interesting here is at the same time, the jury found Miske guilty of four crimes related to Fraser’s murder: Count 2, Murder in Aid of Racketeering; Count 3, Conspiracy to Commit Murder in Aid of Racketeering; Count 5, Kidnapping Using a Facility of Interstate Commerce Resulting in Death; and Count 6, Conspiracy to Commit Kidnapping Using a Facility of Interstate Commerce.

So what’s different about Count 4, where the jury found him “not guilty?” It appears while jurors were convinced Fraser had been killed and Miske was responsible, they apparently did not feel the government had shown “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Miske had paid to have it done.

> Count 15: Conspiracy to Distribute and Possess With Intent to Distribute Cocaine (21 U.S.C. § 846).

This charge stems from a July 2014 drug deal in which Wayne Miller and Michael Buntenbah flew to California with suitcases of cash to purchase about 10 kilos of cocaine, allegedly using cash that Miske provided. The drug buy was broken up after the money was exchanged for drugs, and the two were being driven from the Los Angeles area to the San Francisco airport, where Buntenbah allegedly had a contact able to get the drugs through the TSA’s airport screening.

Miske was secretly indicted on this drug trafficking charge in July 2019, although the indictment was sealed at that time. A new indictment filed a year later, in June 2020, added multiple charges and 10 co-defendants to the case against Miske.

Count 15 of this superseding indictment incorporated the substance of the 2019 indictment involving the July 2014 attempted drug deal. Drug dealing was also at the center of several earlier investigations that had targeted Miske.

There is another point where the jury showed their view that Miske’s involvement in drugs had not been proven.

In Count 1, Racketeering Conspiracy, jurors were asked to consider 14 categories of crimes considered as “predicates” for the racketeering charge. To find Miske guilty of the racketeering conspiracy, jurors had to find Miske and others had agreed to carry out two or more acts of racketeering involving one or more of the 14 categories.

Category #8 is “Trafficking in Controlled Substances.” For this category, the jury found that no acts of drug trafficking had been proved.

For the category of “Murder,” the jury found that one act had been agreed to, presumably the murder of Johnny Fraser.

And for all other categories, jurors found two or more acts had been agreed to in each category.

In all, the jury found at least 25 acts of racketeering had been agreed to, even without drug trafficking. They only needed to find two acts taking place within a 10-year period to find Miske guilty of racketeering conspiracy.

Miske’s lead defense attorney, Michael Kennedy, appears to have effectively challenged witnesses who tied Miske to their drug deals. He argued that the drug trafficking was for their benefit, and that Miske was not involved. It was, it seems, just enough to create reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors, although in the scheme of things, this turned out not to matter.

Count 20, Bank fraud, alleged that during April 2017, Miske had conspired with others to submit “materially false documents” to Bank of Hawaii in order to obtain business loans for the purchase of several trucks. Again, jurors found Miske “not guilty” of this charge.

To obtain the loans, two Miske employees, one described as basically an “errand boy,” were reclassified as “managers” on business registration forms filed with the state. The defense pounded on the ambiguity of the “manager” category used by the state as reported by limited liability companies. Does managing a single employee make one a manager? Perhaps, they seemed to argue. In addition, Miske himself didn’t sign off on the paperwork filed with the state, so there may have been sufficient reasonable doubt about his role directing the changes, and preparing the fraudulent loan documents, for a guilty finding.