David Schutter

His brief career at the law firm of Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie (then just 'Lewis & Roca LLP') in Phoenix, Arizona was interrupted when he was enlisted in the Arizona National Guard (the 277th Military Intelligence Detachment) and was deployed to Hawaii as a corporal.

Schutter was then deployed to Vietnam, where he served at the Tây Ninh Combat Base, after an unsuccessful federal lawsuit that he filed to prevent his unit from being sent overseas.

He was originally billeted to serve as a combat infantryman but was reclassified as a prison interrogator after the intervention of Patsy Mink and Morris Udall.

David C. Schutter (1940-2005) was a Honolulu criminal defense attorney and civil litigator.

Schutter attended Marquette University in 1958 and graduated cum laude less than four years later.

He then attended University of Wisconsin's law school, graduating at the top of his class and also obtaining a Master's of Arts (MA) from Arizona State University.

His service only lasted a few months, and he was released in Oakland, California in August 1969.

Following his return to Hawaii in the same year, he left the Guard to start his own law firm.

He was noted for his flamboyant courtroom persona and involvement in high-profile legal cases in Hawaii during the 1970s and 1980s.

Schutter was born and raised in Appleton, Wisconsin, the son of successful insurance salesman Karl Schuetter and his wife Pearl Balliet Schuetter.

He attended Appleton High School, serving in the student council and as senior class president.

He was also a top athlete who lettered in basketball, track, and baseball and served as a Badger Boys State delegate.

Schutter began his career in the 1970s, representing underworld figures, victims of police misconduct, and some of Hawaii's most prominent criminal defendants.

His early career focused on civil litigation.

Throughout his decades-long career, he worked with many prominent civil attorneys, including future-governor Ben Cayetano, criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey (late of the O. J. Simpson trial's "dream team"), and Miranda v. Arizona lead counsels John P. Frank and John Flynn.

He also mentored attorney Steven Levinson, who would later become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.

Schutter's first big case while at Lewis & Roca was defending the eccentric San Francisco millionaire William Thoresen and his wife who were facing federal firearms charges.

This case arose following an ATF raid on the Thoresen mansion in San Francisco, which revealed a wide array of weapons including handguns, machine guns, bayonets, and even anti-aircraft weapons.

Schutter represented Randall Saito, a 21-year-old man who was charged with murdering a 29-year-old woman in front of Ala Moana Center parking lot in July 1979.

Schutter was the lead plaintiffs' attorney in the lawsuit against notorious grifter Sante Kimes after she was accused and convicted of keeping a large series of undocumented immigrants from Mexico as slaves in the 1980s.

He succeeded in winning a large judgment against her and her insurance company following her conviction on federal criminal charges arising out of the same incidents.

Schutter represented student athlete Terry Whitaker, who was suspended from the University of Hawaii football team without due process after an off-campus altercation.

Whitaker was suspended without any hearing or other formal disciplinary proceeding, a decision which Schutter claimed violated Whitaker's right to due process as well as the university's internal procedures In a landmark decision, a state court judge ordered the university to reinstate Whitaker, a decision that sent shock waves throughout the state which was at the time grappling with racial discrimination against African Americans during the 1980s and 1990s.

Schutter represented Larry Mehau, a Hawaiian businessman who was long suspected of being connected to organized crime in Hawaii.

Mehau had filed a libel suit against a newspaper editor, Rick Reed, who had published an article suggesting that Mehau was the "godfather" of organized crime in Hawaii and linked to two murders.

The suit also named several mainstream media outlets as well as Hawaii State House Minority Leader.

Kamalii obtained a court order forcing the State of Hawaii to pay for her defense.

She was then represented by David Turk who had previously worked for and been trained by Schutter.

While the case continued for years Schutter finally dropped the case against Kamalii.

Schutter also accused Honolulu prosecutor Charles Marsland of waging an "orchestrated campaign" and a "political vendetta" against Mehau and his associate, then-Governor of Hawaii Ryoichi Ariyoshi in the form of criminal charges against some of Mehau's employees and associates.

Schutter also defended Mehau in a campaign finance case related to his contributions to Ariyoshi's gubernatorial campaign.

After a hearing in 1981 (two years after the murder), Schutter successfully secured a verdict of not guilty by mental disease or defect for Saito.

Saito had been diagnosed with sexual sadism and necrophilia (a sexual attraction to corpses).

Upon Saito's sentencing, Schutter remarked:

"I think Randall Saito will be in the state mental hospital or whatever facility they assign him for a long, long time, and by long, long time I’m referring to long after my death."

Schutter founded a not-for-profit entity called the Schutter Foundation in 1981.

In the mid 2010s, Saito's case was featured in the My Favorite Murder podcast.

In 2017, over ten years after Schutter's death, Saito escaped from the Hawaii State Hospital where he was being held for treatment.

Saito was rearrested in California three days later and found competent to stand trial on a charge of escape.

According to a report by the Hawaii State Attorney General, the escape was attributable to lax oversight.