David C Schutter was a Honolulu criminal defense attorney and civil litigator.
22 Facts About David Schutter
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David Schutter was noted for his flamboyant courtroom persona and involvement in high-profile legal cases in Hawaii during the 1970s and 1980s.
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David Schutter attended Appleton High School, serving in the student council and as senior class president.
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David Schutter was a top athlete who lettered in basketball, track, and baseball and served as a Badger Boys State delegate.
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David Schutter then attended University of Wisconsin's law school, graduating at the top of his class and obtaining a Master's of Arts from Arizona State University.
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David Schutter was then deployed to Vietnam, where he served at the Tay Ninh Combat Base, after an unsuccessful federal lawsuit that he filed to prevent his unit from being sent overseas.
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David Schutter 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.
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David Schutter began his career in the 1970s, representing underworld figures, victims of police misconduct, and some of Hawaii's most prominent criminal defendants.
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David Schutter mentored attorney Steven Levinson, who would later become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.
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David 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.
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David 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.
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David Schutter 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.
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David Schutter represented student athlete Terry Whitaker, who was suspended from the University of Hawaii football team without due process after an off-campus altercation.
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Whitaker was suspended without any hearing or other formal disciplinary proceeding, a decision which David 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.
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David Schutter represented Larry Mehau, a Hawaiian businessman who was long suspected of being connected to organized crime in Hawaii.
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David Schutter was then represented by David Turk who had previously worked for and been trained by Schutter.
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David Schutter 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.
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David Schutter defended Mehau in a campaign finance case related to his contributions to Ariyoshi's gubernatorial campaign.
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David Schutter founded a not-for-profit entity called the David Schutter Foundation in 1981.
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The David Schutter Foundation was prominently involved in a 1980s political battle to pass a handgun ban in Hawaii.
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David Schutter died on July 10,2005, a month after suffering a massive stroke.
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David Schutter was survived by his stepdaughter and his four sons.