A 28-year-old deputy prosecuting attorney for the City and County of Honolulu was arrested early Sunday at a DUI checkpoint in Kapolei, one of three people taken into custody during the operation. Miki Nishizawa was stopped on Kualakai Parkway at 1:07 a.m. and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence of an intoxicant, a petty misdemeanor, according to police records. She posted $500 bail following the arrest.
The checkpoint was part of Mothers Against Drunk Driving's nationwide Saturation Saturday initiative, which the Honolulu Police Department carried out in partnership with MADD staff and volunteers, as reported by Hawaii News Now. MADD says the campaign aims to fight impaired driving and save lives, and the organization described the weekend's enforcement push as falling during one of the year's busiest travel periods. The initiative, first launched in 2016, coordinates high-visibility checkpoints with the run-up to Labor Day and aligns with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over campaign, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Nishizawa has worked for the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney since September 2024 and is currently assigned to the felony trial division. The department said it is aware of her reported arrest but that it has no further comment at this time, per the same account from Hawaii News Now.
A Résumé Built on Victim Advocacy and Legal Training
Before joining the prosecutor's office, Nishizawa built a record in youth safety advocacy. In 2016, while a student at Waipahu High School, she developed a peer-to-peer teen domestic violence prevention and traffic safety curriculum that earned her the national Tomorrow's Leaders Award from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office for Victims of Crime, according to the U.S. Office for Victims of Crime. She went on to graduate from The George Washington University Law School in 2023, an institution where roughly 10% of graduates land judicial clerkships annually, and clerked for Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Dean E. Ochiai in Honolulu before joining the prosecutor's office, according to GW Law.
What a Conviction Would Mean Under Hawaii Law
If convicted, Nishizawa would face mandatory penalties under Hawaii Revised Statutes § 291E-61 that leave judges no room for probation or a suspended sentence. A first-offense conviction carries mandatory substance abuse rehabilitation, a driver's license revocation of one to one-and-a-half years, mandatory ignition interlock installation, 72 hours of community service, and either 48 hours to five days in jail or a fine between $250 and $1,000, according to Justia Law. Separate from that criminal case, the arrest also triggers a civil administrative process through the Administrative Driver's License Revocation Office, which can strip driving privileges under a lower preponderance-of-the-evidence standard regardless of the criminal outcome. Drivers have just three calendar days from an alcohol-related arrest to file for administrative reconsideration, according to the Hawaii State Judiciary.
Local Precedent and Prosecutorial Track Record Under Scrutiny
Nishizawa's arrest is not the first time a Honolulu deputy prosecutor has faced a DUI case on Oahu. In April 2015, then-deputy prosecuting attorney Jon Riki Karamatsu was arrested on suspicion of DUI in Waikiki, with booking records showing he was taken into custody around 1:30 a.m. near Ala Moana Boulevard, according to Honolulu Civil Beat. The office has also taken a public hard line on DUI cases involving public figures before: in January 2022, Prosecuting Attorney Steve Alm criticized a judge's acquittal of state Rep. Sharon Har in her DUI trial, according to AP News.
How Nishizawa's own case moves through the system will unfold against a backdrop of uneven local enforcement outcomes. In 2023, the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney declined to file formal charges in roughly 80% of the 1,283 DUI arrests made by the Honolulu Police Department, a statistic cited in a May 2025 class-action lawsuit alleging HPD officers improperly arrested sober drivers, according to the ACLU of Hawaii. Court records also show Oahu's First Circuit Court had just a 57% conviction rate for misdemeanor DUI cases in fiscal year 2022-2023, with 989 of 1,711 finalized cases resulting in conviction, compared with 87% on Maui and 73% on Kauai.
Checkpoints Framed as a Proven Deterrent
Research cited by MADD indicates that sobriety checkpoints and high-visibility patrols like the one that caught Nishizawa can reduce drunk-driving fatalities by as much as 20%, according to PR Newswire. Hoodline has previously covered HPD's checkpoint push during the holiday season, part of the department's ongoing sobriety enforcement across Oahu. Nishizawa's case now heads into that same system her own office prosecutes through, with no additional comment yet from the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney.
