Peter Benson Carlisle (born October 12, 1952)[2] is an American politician and attorney who served as the 13th Mayor of Honolulu, Hawaii from 2010 to 2013.
Prior to serving as interim Mayor following the resignation of former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann (in Hannemann's unsuccessful bid to run for Hawaii State governor against former U.S. Representative Neil Abercrombie), Carlisle had served as the Prosecuting Attorney of Honolulu from 1996 to 2010.
He attended Kent School in Connecticut and pursued an undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
After receiving his Juris Doctor degree from UCLA, he was recruited as a deputy prosecutor for the City and County of Honolulu.
In 1988, Carlisle went into private practice for the Honolulu law firm of Shim, Tam, Kirimitsu, Kitamura and Chang where he worked for eight years, mostly handling personal injury cases.
[8][9] While in office as prosecuting attorney he pushed for tougher sentencing laws and led a successful fight to amend the state constitution to allow for "information charging" and eliminate the requirement that victims and other witnesses testify during preliminary or grand jury hearings.
Carlisle steadily gained in the polls after the September Primary and beat Arakawa in the November runoff in the general election.
[11] On August 12, 2012, Carlisle came in third out of three candidates in the non-partisan Honolulu mayoral primary election, thus eliminating him from the race.