In religious ceremonies, the priests were clothed with absolute power, and selected the victims for the sacrifices.

This privilege gave them an immense and dangerous influence in private life, whence the Hawaiian proverb: The priest's man is inviolable, the chief's man is the prey of death, _Aole e make ko ke kahuna kanaka, o ko ke 'lii kanaka ke make_.
The kahuna, being clothed with supreme power in the exercise of his functions, alone could designate the victim suitable to appease the anger of the gods.

The people feared him much for this prerogative, which gave the power of life and death over all, and the result was that the priest had constantly at his service an innumerable crowd of men and women wholly devoted to him.

It was not proper for him to choose victims from a people who paid him every imaginable attention.

But among the servants of the alii, if there were any who had offended the priest or his partisans, nothing more was necessary to condemn to death such or such an attendant of even the highest chief.