Word: kahahawai
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...ballot. Of the five Americans, three Chinese, a Dane, a German, a Portuguese and a Hawaiian, only a minority were for convicting Lieut. Thomas Hedges Massie, U. S. N., Mrs. Granville Roland Fortescue, his mother-in-law, and Seamen Lord and Jones for the second-degree murder of Joseph Kahahawai Jr. After that, locked in around the long table with Foreman John Stone at its head, the jurors settled down to harangue one another on Hawaii's most sensational case...
Under the law they had to trust their recollection on all the things that had been said in court during the three-week trial. They had heard Prosecutor Kelley's witnesses give an account of Kahahawai's kidnapping and the discovery of his corpse. They had listened to Lieut. Massie's long story of how his wife had been ravished, its effect on his mind, his success in extorting a confession from Kahahawai just before, with a revolver in his hand, his mind went blank. Pretty young Thalia Fortescue Massie had dramatically corroborated her husband's tale. Alienists had sworn...
...sole defendant to take the witness stand Lieut. Massie at no time testified that he had shot and killed Kahahawai. His story ran only up to the moment when the brown-skinned native blurted: "We done it." After that the young submarine officer swore his mind went blank, he had no recollection of what he did. Prosecutor John C. Kelley openly doubted this version of the Kahahawai killing, indicated that he thought one of the two seamen had really fired the shot. But clever old Clarence Darrow, chief defense counsel, gave his adversary no opportunity to enlarge upon this doubt...
Lawyer Darrow's whole case was based on the assumption that Lieut. Massie, in a fit of insanity induced by the confession of his wife's ravisher, actually did pull the trigger that resulted in Kahahawai's death. If the young husband who held the gun and did not recall firing it could be cleared by the jury, the case against the other three defendants in no way linked to the shooting would also fall flat...
...days the trial was delayed while the prosecution rounded up some alienists of its own to swear with equal positiveness that Lieut. Massie was sane when Kahahawai was shot. Lawyer Darrow would not allow Dr. Joseph Catton and Paul Bowers, both also of California, to examine his client. But that did not prevent the pair from testifying after a perusal of the court record...