Word: kahahawai
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With all testimony in, the polyglot Honolulu jury trying Lieut. Thomas Hedges Massie, U. S. N.. his mother-in-law and two naval enlisted men for second-degree murder, was left last week with a split-second blind spot on the actual killing of Joseph Kahahawai Jr., Hawaiian buck. Nowhere in the sworn evidence was an eye-witness account of all that happened that early January morning at Mrs. Granville Roland Fortescue's. Between the time Kahahawai, cowed by a revolver held by Lieut. Massie, allegedly confessed to the ravishment of Mrs. Thalia Fortescue Massie and a bullet...
...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...
Said Prosecutor Kelley: "If Massie killed Kahahawai, why did he use Jones's gun instead of his own?. . . Why, Massie did not even kill Kahahawai." But Prosecutor Kelley in his cross-examination was not able to change a jot or tittle of Lieutenant Massie's story. The officer told how he learned of his own actions : "Mrs. Fortescue said I stood there like a bump on a log. Later they put me in a chair. Jones. . . said I acted like a damn fool...
What manner of defense Mr. Darrow would set up for Mrs. Fortescue and her co-defendants remained a speculative secret last week. Undoubtedly he was relying on the probability that the prosecution had no eye-witness to the Kahahawai killing, would thus have to content itself with a circumstantial case. That he would attempt to justify the murder as a matter of Anglo-Saxon honor by bringing the rape of Mrs. Massie into the testimony, bobbed up during the jury-picking. Judge Davis, however, was inclined to rule that Kahahawai's guilt in that assault had not been established...
Last week in Washington Assistant Attorney General Seth Richardson's report on Hawaii was published. Early this year the Senate, stirred by the Massie rape, the Kahahawai killing (see above) and the Navy's charge that its women were not safe in Hawaii, caused Attorney General Mitchell to send Mr. Richardson for a personal investigation. His report flayed Honolulu's law enforcement, blamed politics for the current mess and deflated much of the race sensationalism attaching to the Massie and Fortescue cases. Excerpts...