Mr. Petricevic,
You were in the room on December 2, 2022.
You appeared in the First Circuit Court in Honolulu as counsel for ████████████. I appeared pro se. Judge Wilson M.N. Loo presided. The proceeding was recorded by audio only. The record was later sealed at your request.
This letter concerns the professional-responsibility questions arising from the sequence that occurred in that courtroom.
Your client was placed under oath. I asked a question that tested his testimony against a text-message exhibit already in the court file. That exhibit was directly relevant to the truthfulness of the testimony being given. As counsel, you had access to the file and were in a position to understand the context in which the question was being asked.
I was facing Judge Loo while asking the question. Before your client answered, I observed Judge Loo look from me toward the witness and make a “no” head gesture while scrunching his nose. I also observed you and your client looking toward Judge Loo during that sequence. You were seated facing the bench. You were positioned to observe the judge, the witness, and the exchange.
Your client then gave testimony that appeared inconsistent with that exhibit.
I immediately attempted to place what I had observed on the record. I began: “Let the record show that the judge just—”
Judge Loo cut me off.
That exchange is on the sealed audio. The words, the timing, and the interruption do not depend on memory. They are preserved in the court’s own record.
The visual gesture and where you were looking are my firsthand observations. The sealed audio cannot capture where anyone’s eyes were, but it can capture what happened immediately afterward: your client’s answer, my attempted “Let the record show…” statement, and the court’s interruption. What you personally perceived or concluded is your account to give.
During the same proceeding, your client introduced the accusation of ███████. The court did not strike it. The court did not admonish the witness. The court did not permit me to answer it before the record was sealed.
You then requested sealing. The court granted your request.
The issue now is what followed after you were present for that sequence.
Hawaiʻi Rule of Professional Conduct 8.3(b) states that a lawyer who knows that a judge has committed a violation of applicable rules of judicial conduct raising a substantial question as to the judge’s fitness for office shall inform the appropriate authority.
When the rule is triggered, the duty is mandatory. The operative word is “shall.”
If a judge signals a sworn witness before an answer, that raises a substantial question. If a judge cuts off a pro se litigant’s attempt to place alleged judicial conduct on the record, that raises a substantial question. If a judge allows a severe out-of-turn accusation to remain unrebutted and then grants a sealing request that closes the record around the sequence, that raises a substantial question.
In my account, you were not merely present. You were looking at the judge during the exchange. That is why the reporting question is directed to you.
If you dispute that observation, the audio-confirmable sequence still remains: the answer, the attempted “Let the record show…” statement, the cutoff, the accusation, and the sealing request.
You were not required to agree with me. You were not required to become my advocate. You were not required to abandon your client’s lawful interests. The question is whether the sequence created a reporting obligation for a Hawaiʻi lawyer and officer of the court under Rule 8.3(b).
If Rule 8.3(b) was triggered, it contains no exception for local professional risk. It contains no exception for discomfort. It contains no exception for the institutional standing of a judge. It contains no exception for a lawyer who would rather treat a courtroom irregularity as someone else’s problem.
The practical consequence of the absence of any known report was concrete. A sealed official record now contains the very exchange I tried to preserve and the accusation I was not allowed to answer. Institutional reviewers can encounter that sealed record before they encounter any public rebuttal, complaint, or investigative publication. The sealing request you made was part of the sequence that created that posture.
The Commission on Judicial Conduct later stated that Judge Loo had left per diem service as of July 2024 and that the jurisdictional window had closed. By the time the matter was presented again, the state judicial-discipline pathway had been procedurally foreclosed.
That foreclosure matters because any reporting question had to be addressed when the record was fresh, when the audio was available, when the judge remained within the Commission’s jurisdiction, and when a lawyer present for the sequence and, in my observation, looking toward the judge could have asked the appropriate authority to review it.
This letter is public because the institutional record remains sealed, the ordinary oversight window has closed, and the question of professional responsibility remains.
The sealed audio exists. The court file exists. The audio-confirmable sequence can be reviewed. The question is whether the institutions with authority to retrieve the record will listen to it.
When they do, your role in the sequence can be evaluated.
You were present for the sworn denial. You were present for the attempted “Let the record show…” statement. You were present when Judge Loo cut me off. You were present for the accusation. You requested the seal. I am aware of no report by you to the Commission on Judicial Conduct or any other appropriate authority.
The record will show what happened. History will ask what those present did with it.