Pictures are taken from the internet and are used for illustrative purposes only
I BEGIN: The Supreme Court of Hawaii was doing it's normal appellate function in a case GRANILLO v. STATE 2026 Haw. Lexis 179 on July 15, 2026. The case was about the 1990 conviction of Daniel R. Granillo for kidnapping and sexual assault. A FBI Agent Wayne Oakes provided expert testimony of scientific analysis that essentially convicted Mr. Granillo. Then in 2017, The United States Department of Justice informed Hawaiian Officials, that basically, FBI Agent Wayne Oakes expert testimony was false. Resulting in the Supreme Court of Hawaii ruling on July 15, 2026; that Mr. Granillo must be given a new trial. So, in writing the unanimous decision of the Court, Justice Todd W. Eddins, found cause to expose the fraudulent work of the Republicans and Conservatives on the Supreme Court of the United States in no uncertain terms that is basis of the title of this work and is germane to our work or reforming Virginia's imprisonment scheme. Maybe, there is precedent for Justice Eddins exposé, nonetheless it is invaluable and instructive, to our understanding of, Law, the Social Contract and it's political-economy, accordingly below I excerpt it.
"We are not side-stepping anything. We are doing what state constitutionalism ask us to do. Stand our ground.....We interpret the Hawaii Constitution on its own terms. The United States Supreme Court's construction of the Federal DUE PROCESS CLAUSE does not define the protection of our State's DUE PROCESS CLAUSE. This Court " reason[s] independently, untethered from the Supreme Court's analysis of the United States Constitution" STATE v. WILSON 154 HAWAII 8 (2024). The Court that now defines Federal Due Process does not honor the work of 1954. It revives the work of 1857.The work of 1896. The Constitution must be interpreted "according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted". DRED SCOTT v. STANDFORD 60 U.S. 393 (1857). Today's hubristic originalists use the same method to control modern life. See CITY and CNTY. OF HONOLULU v. SUNOCO LP. 153 HAWAII 326 (2022) (EDDINS J. Concurring) ("A Justice's personal values and ideas about the very old days suddenly control the lives of present and future generations"). The Court overrides what Congress passed. It overrides what the People chose. All to serve it's own ends. What this Court has done to Constitutional rights, democratic institutions, and the rule of law explains why Hawaii's Constitution takes no instruction from it. Article I section 5 provides versatile and sovereign protection. The Court does not anchor Hawaii's Due Process rights to the Federal floor. Especially one that keeps sinking. We take no guidance on the meaning of Due Process from a court that gutted due process protections in DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN'S HEALTH ORG. 597 U.S. 215 (2022) ZUFFANTE called it straight DOBBS erased a " generation-long constitutional right, stripping autonomy from half the population, and empowering States to force births" STATE v. ZUFFANTE 157 HAWAII 194 (2022). Article I section 5 does not import that results-driven approach to due process. We follow Principles, not Agendas.The Supreme Court's imperious ideology does not stop at Due Process. The same jurisprudence has created 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 570 U.S.529(2013),began the judicial demolition, inventing a textually unsupported equal-sovereignty fiction and striking down preclearance on a hunch that the law worked too well. BRANOVICH v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 594 U.S. 647(2021),fabricated "guideposts" nowhere in SECTION 2 to greenlight racial discrimination in voting. LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS 146 S. Ct. 1231 (2026), 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 judgement mid-primary,a favor granted over objection only twice in twenty-five years. CALLAIS v.LOUISIANA 146 S.Ct.1111(2026) (JACKSON, J. dissenting). Weeks later, on it's shadow docket, the Court tossed an eleven-day trial record built on fifty-one witnesses,790 exhibits, 2,600 pages of testimony, and a 270-page opinion by a Three-Judge Court. See SINGLETON v. ALLEN 782 F.Supp.3d 1092 (N.D.Ala.2025). It resurrected a tainted congressional map the Three-Judge factfinders found deliberately entrenched racial bias against Black voters. ALLEN v. MILLIGAN 146 S. Ct 1377 (2026). see also HILO BAY MARINA v. STATE 156 HAWAII 478 (2025) (the "Courts" frequent misrepresentation of the factual record and it's throw-judges- under-the-bus disdain for District Courts, the fact finders of the Federal judiciary, harm the Justice System. 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 sec. I. It turns it's back on what is in plain sight. The FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT is not colorblind. It never was. The Court calls the Constitution colorblind while engineering the dilution of Black votes, the unraveling of hard fought civil rights remedies, and the erasure of Black History. That is not blindness. That is white sight, by design. A Constitution interpreted this way is not colorblind. It is whatever the Court needs it to be. A way to advance its partisan project. The damage to democracy extends beyond the Voting Rights Act. In CITIZENS UNITED v. FED.ELECTION COMM'N 558 U.S. 310 (2010), the Court claimed fidelity to text, history, and tradition while invalidating yet another democratically vetted law, handing corporations the same speech rights as flesh-and- blood Americans and letting dollars talk louder than voters. See SUNOCO 153 HAWAII at 362 (EDDINS, J. concurring) (originalism applies selectively and vanishes inconveniently) LEO E. STRINE, Jr. and NICHOLAS WALTER, ORIGINALISTS OR ORIGINAL: THE DIFFICULTIES OF RECONCILING CITIZENS UNITED WITH CORPORATE LAW HISTORY 91 NOTRE DAME L .Rev. 877 (2016) (CITIZENS UNITED cannot be reconciled with corporate law history). Other decisions followed. The Court abandoned partisan gerrymandering to the gerrymanderers, refusing for the first time to remedy a constitutional violation because it believed the task beyond judicial competence. RUCHO v. COMMON CAUSE 588 U.S.684 (2019) (KAGAN, J. dissenting). It placed a President above the law. TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 603 U.S.593 (2024). Last month, NAT'L REPUBLICAN SENATORIAL COMM.v. FEC 225 L.ED. 2d 998 (2026).Made CITIZENS UNITED look quaint, shredding coordinated spending limits Congress had enacted and ensuring that those who bankroll elections drown out the ordinary person. Billionaires spend to be repaid. Everyone else just votes. The Roberts Court has made sure one's wealth counts more than another's vote. Rulings run in one direction time after time. Weakening protections for those with less power. Fortifying those with more. The pattern speaks for itself. A court that systematically dismantles democratic safeguards, steamrolls constitutional liberties and tramples human dignity does not chart the course for the Hawaii Constitution. Our Constitualism system was designed for times like these. Federalism is not a formality. It is the architecture. The framers built dual sovereignty into the structure of American government as an independent check against concentrated Federal power. A Supreme Court driven by agenda and intent on swiping power that belongs to the people is exactly what that check was built for. When six Justices walk away from those they are supposed to protect, state constitutions hold the line. That is not defiance. That is the design. State Constitualism makes it easy to consider Roberts Court jurisprudence "white noise". See HILO BAY MARINA 156 HAWAII at 518. Add it all up. Draining Due Process. Rolling back voting rights. Flooding elections with money. Rubber stamping gerrymandering. Crowning a President. Blessing discrimination in the name of the Constitution. FULTON v. CITY of PHILADELPHIA, Pa. 593 U.S.522 (2021) 303 CREATIVE LLC. v. ELENIS 600 U.S.570 (2023).Looking at naked racism and seeing none of it. MULLIN v. DOE 225 L.ED.2d 594 (2026) ( racist words not "overtly racist").Making the country more dangerous with a SECOND AMENDMENT unmoored from text or history and unrecognizable to the framers who wrote it. NEW YORK STATE RIFLE and PISTOL ASS'N INC v. BRUEN 597 U.S.1 (2022), WILSON 154 HAWAII at 22 ("disabl[ing] the state responsibility to protect public safety, reduce gun violence, and safeguard peaceful public movement" with its deadly jurisprudence). Then striking down a carefull law and showing disdain for Hawaii's Constitutional traditions. WOLFORD v. LOPEZ 225 L. ED 2d 494 (2026). Subverting Congressional choices with a homemade "major questions" power grab that plays "get-out-of-text-free cards" to block agencies from doing what Congress told them to do.WEST VIRGINIA v. ENV'T PROT.AGENCY 597 U.S. 697 (2022) (KAGAN, J. dissenting). Then commandeering the interpretive authority Congress gave federal agencies, over ruling CHEVRON after forty years because to this particular Court, precedent is advisory. LOPER BRIGHT ENTERS. v. RAIMONDO 603 U.S.369 (2024). This term, transmuting Federal spending programs into private contracts, the Court forced the SPENDING CLAUSE to "reduce some of Congress greatest legislative achievements" LANDOR v. LOUISIANA DEP'T of CORR. and PUB.SAFETY 225 L.ED.2d.394 (2026) (JACKSON, J. dissenting). Days later, it freed the President to fire at will the very Commissioners a law sheltered from removal, discarding a unanimous opinion, HUMPHREY'S EXECUTOR on a cherry-picked slice of history-a century of settled practice recast as a mistake, competent governance sacrificed to the partisan cause. TRUMP v. SLAUGHTER 225 L.ED.2d 664 (2026). The next morning, fair-weather textualists-living constitution originalists, really-deserted the text and our Nation's history the moment it promised citizenship, one vote from writing that right out of the Constitution. TRUMP v. BARBARA 225 L.ED. 2d 876 (2026). That's not all life tenure and zero accountability have produced lately. But its enough. Article I. Section 5 needs no part of this. The Hawaii Constitution was built to stand on its own. And so it does" [excerpted GRANILLO v. STATE 2026 HAW.LEXIS 179,,JUSTICE TODD W.EDDINS WRITING THE UNANIMOUS OPINION].
As I initially stated Justice Eddins words are extremely instructive for our reform work of Virginia's imprisonment scheme and it is also fundamentally revelatory to our understanding. What Justice Eddins words speak to is that maxim, history is written by the victor or told from the conquerors point of view. Which as maxim isn't only applicable to conquest, but as insight, lengths are travelled by in whose interest, to conceal such. Because the operative is, who will SPEAK. Again, what Justice Eddins words reveal is, as long as the reaction is silence then, the maxim of the "victor", or as it applys to our reform work, the status quo claiming the narrative is then self-fulfilling. All Justice Eddins said about the Supreme Court of the United States is correct, just as what we say about the Virginia prison official.By William Thorpe
William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
