JUSTICE IN HAWAII

On Wednesday, Governor Lawrence M. Judd of Hawaii passed through probably the most difficult crisis of his official career. According to legal requirements, any leniency to the Massie defendants must come through him. The court was powerless to carry out the jury's recommendation for clemency, and unless immediate executive commutation intervened, all four prisoners would be forced to pay the penalty for their crime. And while Governor Judd knew well that native sentiment demanded punishment and would react disagreeably to undue leniency, he was influenced even more by expressions of American opinion which reached him. The Governor was not only an American appointed official, he was a white man; and he commuted the ten-year sentence to one hour.

Superficially, his action was the easiest way out of a difficult situation. The Massie defendants were no longer a menace to society; by now they must have realized the seriousness of their crime, and their long ordeal, with the attendant uncertainty of its outcome, must have been a terrible punishment in itself. From a humans point of view clemency appeared justified. An whatever hesitancy a wavering official must have felt when he considered the effects of such an act on native opinion was apparently swept aside by the storm of appeal from across the Pacific. The nature of that storm, stirred up by the worst sort of yellow journalism and political demagogy would have repelled a stronger man; to Judd it appeared adequate substantiation of a move which he regarded as his only resort in a muddle which had grown too complex for his powers.

But a consideration of the native problem which this hasty clemency has provoked soon reveals a far deeper significance. The last few months in Hawaii have been little short of a governmental crisis. The horrible crime of the five native Hawaiians called forth a Congressional denunciation of the appalling laxity of law enforcement on the islands, a short-lived investigation, and a promise of stern impartial administration of justice in the future. But natives were more impressed by the failure to convict the attackers and the undue leniency and sympathy accorded the Massie group after they had taken justice into their own hands. The same disregard for law has continued unabated. And now the only means left to demonstrate the power of that law,--the strict imposition of sentence,--has been cast aside because a governor was too weak to face the angry censure which impartiality would incur.

It was well for Governor Judd to assert his opinion on the matter, for to have allowed the case to proceed through the indefinite and sympathetic channels of the law would have appeared to the native as partial as his present decision. But it would have been more just and far-sighted to commute the sentences to a real term of imprisonment; for only thus could he have assured the natives of his impartiality and secured a retrial of the offending Hawaiians. At present, law in Hawaii stands riddled with race prejudice and contempt; to reestablish its prestige will prove a task almost impossible under present conditions of faltering leadership and public indifference.