The state Senate has passed and the House must now quickly consider Senate Bill 36, which cleans up state law to allow prosecutors, in any given case, to choose only one method to try a suspect for a major felony: either a preliminary hearing or grand jury indictment.

Both of these methods had been used to charge suspects with serious felonies until last September, when the Hawaii Supreme Court’s ruling in State of Hawaii vs. Richard Obrero upended an established, and constitutionally authorized, statewide system.

The ruling was partially based on an editing oversight — failure to delete a contradictory rule requiring a grand jury hearing — made decades ago by a previous Hawaii Legislature.

That decision has merit: It upholds defendants’ rights to rules-based treatment in court, and effectively ends repeated attempts to gain a felony indictment with a second strategy after the first has failed.

In effect, however, the Obrero ruling has clogged up courts since September with cases that had to be refiled, and posed a risk that certain potentially dangerous defendants accused of murder, manslaughter and other serious felonies who had been headed to trial after a preliminary hearing could be set free.

With a new legislative session underway, the opportunity to remedy this procedural snag is at hand. If lawmakers work quickly, future cases will be subject to a more fair and transparent process, resulting in a system that’s better than before.

This mess began with a 2019 murder case against Richard Obrero, who shot and killed a 16-year-old youth, and claimed self-defense. A grand jury declined to return an indictment. However, prosecutors then brought the case to a judge for a preliminary hearing.

Hawaii’s Constitution had been amended in 1982, specifying that prosecutors could choose between a grand jury or a preliminary hearing — and in some cases, written information — to initiate felony trial proceedings. However, the amendment did not clearly prohibit moving from one option to another.

The judge allowed the Obrero case to go forward, contradicting the grand jury’s earlier refusal to indict.

On appeal, the Supreme Court held for the defendant, based on an all-but-forgotten 1905 clause in Hawaii’s rules of procedure that required all serious felony cases go solely to a grand jury. The Obrero ruling voided charges in more than 160 felony cases on Oahu alone, and effectively canceled hundreds of anticipated trials statewide.

The 1905 rule, based on a no-longer-valid reading of Hawaii’s Constitution, should have been deleted in 1982. However, it was “overlooked,” as Prosecutor Steve Alm put it.

Calls by Alm and others for a special session of the state Legislature to resolve the issue last fall were not answered. But it’s a credit to Hawaii’s Judiciary that the courts moved quickly, albeit at a cost of time, manpower and money, to add grand jury sessions. Suspected felons who potentially posed the most danger to the public were recharged, rather than released.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Karl Rhoads has now drafted Senate Bill 36 in cooperation with Hawaii’s county prosecutors, the state Attorney General’s Office, and the state Public Defenders’ Office.

The bill once again clears the way for charging a defendant for serious felonies through either a preliminary hearing or grand jury indictment, and allows specified uses of written information. It also spells out that multiple attempts to charge a suspect are not allowed, except under certain legal circumstances.

SB 36 must now move forward quickly to enactment, with approval by the state House and Gov. Josh Green. Defendants, crime victims and the court system will all benefit.