Summary Of A Death In The Islands: The Unwritten Law

In A Death in the Islands: The Unwritten Law and the Last Trial of Clarence Darrow (Skyhorse Publishing, 2016), Dallas author Mike Farris recounts the events surrounding two explosive and racially charged trials in early 1930s Hawaii involving a group of Pacific Islander and Asian men, known collectively as the Ala Moana Boys, who were the Hawaiian equivalents of their more notorious black contemporaries, the Scottsboro Boys of Alabama. Farris, who was inspired to write the A Death in the Islands after stumbling upon Theon Wright’s Rape in Paradise in a bookstore in Hawaii more than 20 years ago, artfully weaves together separate incidents that occurred during the early morning hours of Sunday, September 13, 1931. While the author states in

Tommie Massie, on Ala Moana Road in Honolulu. He walks us through the events of that fateful night, juxtaposing real life scenes and characters while building a case with a rhythm as compelling as any fictional mystery. The resulting rape trial produced a hung jury (8 to 4 for acquittal), primarily, we learn, because of alibi evidence developed by defense counsel, and because of the prosecution shenanigans they exposed.

Unhappy with the verdict, Grace Fortescue, Ms. Massie’s New York socialite mother, along with Lt. Massie and two of his Navy buddies, concocted a scheme to kidnap one of the Ala Moana Boys (Joe Kahahawai) and coerce a confession. Their plan goes awry. On January 8, 1932, Kahahawai is shot and killed. All four are charged with second-degree murder.

Fortescue’s family hired Clarence Darrow, of Scopes Monkey Trial fame, to serve as defense counsel. The trial proved to be Darrow’s last courtroom hurrah, and Farris notes that he was dismayed to learn that Darrow, erstwhile “champion of the underdog,” took the case only because of the hefty retainer of $40,000 (worth over $600,000

Massie was insane at the time he allegedly shot and killed Kahahawai. But the judge admonished the jury not to consider the unwritten law. On April 29, 1932, after over 40 hours of deliberation, the jury found all four defendants guilty of manslaughter, but recommended leniency in punishment. The judge sentenced all four defendants to 10 years imprisonment at hard labor, but that punishment was immediately commuted by the Governor of Hawaii to one hour each, which the convicts served during a reception held for them in his office. The surviving Ala Moana Boys were never