Hawaiian Executions 1826

Hawaiian Executions 1826

JOSEPH THEROUXA Short History of Hawaiian Executions,1826-1947

IT WAS ON A HOT DAY in 1943 that Ardiano Domingo grabbed apair of scissors and stabbed a woman to death in a Kaua'i pineap-ple field.

 No one was surprised when, five months later, he mounted the scaffold at O'ahu Prison, listened to the death war-rant read, had a black sack tied over his head and his arms and legs bound, and then plunged through the trap door to his death.

But many would have been surprised if you had told them that Ardiano would be the last civilian hanged in Hawai'i. Oh, there would be others sentenced, and the dates would be set, and scaf-folds built, but nothing would come of them.

 Some said it wasbecause there were too many haole (Caucasians) who risked hang-ing. And Hawai'i—the melting pot of the Pacific, the land ofaloha, the Ellis Island of the West, the islands of "the new race" —did not hang haole.For Ardiano Domingo was Filipino. Filipinos used to behanged in Hawai'i with great regularity, just as the 19th centurysaw an equal number of Hawaiians hanged. Out of 75 docu-mented civilian hangings in Hawai'i, 48 have been Filipino and Hawaiian. 

This place has always enjoyed a good hanging. During Territo-rial days, it reached its peak. There was standing room only atMiles Fukunaga's execution in 1929,2 though the Republic ofHawai'i saw its share. Even before that, in 1846, mobs sur-Joseph Theroux is a novelist and historian who makes his home at Kaumana, near Hilo.The Hawaiian Journal of History, vol. 25(1991)

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rounded the inner gate of the old Honolulu Fort to witness thedouble hanging of two Hawaiians, Ahulika and Kaomali. Theyhad murdered Kaomali's husband, one Kawao.3 (But WilliamEllis tells us that banishment was a more likely punishment formurder in those days.4)There have been nine double hangings at O'ahu Prison.

But at one time the hanging room boasted three metal rings abovethe trap. On two occasions, all three rings were employed simul-taneously.

THE PACIFIC COMMERCIAL ADVERTI8E1TOOK HUMAN LIFE.

First in the group is Sagata Tsuni kichi, Japanese. He killed his wifeand young child with a knife on Maui and is to be hanged March 25, 1898,in Honolulu. In the middle is Kamalo, a native, on trial at Lahaina, chargedwith killing a Chinese woman at Wailuku with a club and stones. He wasseen approaching and leaving the house near which the crime was commit-ted. On the, right is Yofu.ua, Japanese,, to be banged March 25, next inHonolulu. He stabbed to death the wife of a countryman at Lahaina.FIG. I. The PCA of December 13, 1897 featured sketches of three prisoners. Tsunikichi andYoshida were executed at O'ahu Prison on March 25, 1898, in what was called a "doubleheader." Kamalo escaped the hangman's noose. (Author's photo.)

A SHORT HISTORY OF HAWAIIAN EXECUTIONS 

When the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Furmanvs. Georgia, 1972, that capital punishment was cruel and unusualpunishment, one of the points the Court made was that there wasan inordinate number of Blacks hanged in the South. The Courtnoted that racial discrimination was an obvious feature of the sen-tences. (It did not take into account the popular Ku Klux Klansport of lynching, which took thousands of Black lives.)5In Hawai'i over the years, there have been nine Japanesehanged, six Koreans, three Puerto Ricans, five Chinese, 24 Filipi-nos, possibly 15 Hawaiians, and one Caucasian.In 1889, there were two Chinese on Hawai'i's death row. Onewas Ah Hop, who had killed a Hawaiian teacher by the name ofDavid Kapaha'e.6 The other was Akana, who had stabbed AhSing, his roommate, and then burned the house to dispose of thebody.7 While they were awaiting execution, the Pacific CommercialAdvertiser editorialized on "The Epidemic of Murder" and, later,on "the treacherous Chinese." Wherever white men lived closelywith the Chinese, the editor wrote, they grew to despise the wilyrace, who frequently murdered for revenge.8 The Advertiser alsohelpfully carried accounts of the experiments that were takingplace at Thomas Edison's Mainland laboratory on the use of elec-tricity in "humane killing." (The laboratory had already dis-patched a dog, a goat, and a horse, and was pleased with theresults.9)All this heightened the anticipation for the upcoming "doubleheader," as they were known, which finally took place on March5, 1889. Both Chinese were from the Big Island of Hawai'i.10Another case which received much publicity was that ofPo'olua. In 1881, the Hawaiian grew enraged when his common-law wife, according to the papers, "paraded her infidelity" beforehim and slaughtered her with a "big butcher knife." Then, in a fitof remorse, he draped his house in mourning with black crepepaper.The case is instructive because, as far as I can ascertain, it is thefirst of its kind in Hawai'i that used insanity as a plea. Theexperts of the day—family doctors and preachers—were con-ducted in to interview the bewildered man. They questioned himand concluded that he was not insane. Po'olua himself agreed that

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he was sane but "darkened in my mind." Reverand Charles McEwan Hyde, he of the infamous slander on Father Damien,maintained that Po'olua was not insane but "intoxicated." Andthe Reverend H. H. Parker explained the man's actions this way:"A Hawaiian would do many things which a white manwould not."When it was found that Po'olua had a heart abnormality andthat he would likely die soon anyway, letters of clemency were cir-culated on his behalf. But he was hanged on May 20,1881. Permis-sion was sought for a post mortem to investigate the state of hisheart, but officials denied the request. The Advertiser remarkedthat it "should have been done. Being attended to, might havelaid him quiet in his grave; but being forbidden, his spirit will riseup Banquo-like for many a day to come."11 In the spirit of judicialmurder, the Hawaiian government, like Macbeth, continued onits bloody course.MacBeth and insanity were also features in the death of GilJamieson, who had been kidnapped by a mad youth who filled hisransom letters with quotations from the Shakespearean play:"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / that struts and fretshis hour upon the stage / and then is heard no more. ..." Thevictim had his skull chiseled in and was strangled and left nearSeaside Avenue in Waikikl. The murderer and author of the let-ters was captured some days later, tried, convicted, and sentencedto hang, all within three weeks. This feat was facilitated becausehis lawyers, Beebe and Huber, offered no defense and called nowitnesses. The jury included members who were part of thesearch party and the victim's bodyguard and gravedigger. ANavy psychiatrist offered to testify for the defense but wasrebuffed. The medical examiner was also the prosecution psychia-trist, Doctor Robert Faus. He testified that past suicide attemptsby Miles Fukunaga were "normal."12 Despite protests andappeals, Fukunaga was hanged.13Ten years earlier, a well-known local haole athlete, David Buick,found himself down on his luck. He ordered a taxi driver, one ItoSuzuki, to drive out of Honolulu proper to a place called RedHill. He ordered the man to stop the car and get out. He pointeda gun at the driver and robbed him of one dollar. When Suzuki

A SHORT HISTORY OF HAWAIIAN EXECUTIONS 151turned to flee, Buick shot him in the back. Before he died, the taxidriver identified Buick as the gunman. The charge was eventuallyreduced to second degree murder, and Buick is said to havereturned to the Mainland following his jail time.14In both cases, there was premeditation, kidnapping, murder,and flight. Fukunaga willingly confessed and indeed showedextreme remorse. Buick never confessed or showed the slightestregret over his actions. But Fukunaga had murdered a fine boy ofa prominent haole family. Buick had only murdered a middle-agedJapanese taxi driver.Race (and politics) was also an issue in the shooting of DoctorJared K. Smith on Kaua'i in 1897. Smith had decreed, or wasabout to, that a Hawaiian woman, a leper, should be sent to theleper settlement on Moloka'i. Her cousin, one Kapea, broodedon the decision and then made one of his own. He practiced witha revolver, and then on September 24 of that year shot DoctorSmith in the man's doorway. Justice was swift. Kapea was con-victed in November and sentenced in December to hang, the sen-tence carried out four months later. One of the reasons justice wasso swift was that Smith's brother, W. O. Smith, was the AttorneyGeneral of the Republic of Hawai'i.Kapea, described as a young, handsome, six-footer, was askedon the scaffold if he had any last words. He complained that, yes,the rope was too tight.15But, of course, there was one haole who was hanged in Hawai'i:Frank Johnson in 1906. That was not his real name. He was JohnO'Connell, an illiterate Irishman who had deserted the cargo shipFrank Johnson upon her arrival in Hawai'i. He became a laborerwith a predilection for children. On January 3, 1906, he kid-napped and mutilated the son of a prominent kama 'aina (nativeborn) family, Simeon Wharton. Newspapers called it "the mostawful deed in the criminal annals of Oahu." When it was revealedthat the boy had been dismembered, decapitated, and disem-boweled with a knife and hatchet, the papers called it "the work ofa human pervert" but carefully added, "not necessarily a luna-tic." "Johnson" later explained that the mutilations were re-quired because he could not fit the body into the shallow, rockygrave he had dug in the Waialua canefield. "Johnson" was

I52 THE HAWAIIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORYknown to be backward and shrunken and was probably retardedas well.16 Fukunaga, who grew up in the same area and was bornthree years after the murder, no doubt heard all the stories aboutit and was influenced by it: he, too, would kidnap and murder theson of a prominent haole family.There have been at least seven military executions in Hawai'i,most of them at Schofield Barracks' Execution Gulch, locatedbehind the post cemetery (see Appendix II). Garlan Mickles wasthe last, hanged April 22, 1947. He was in such good spirits that hehelped the guard adjust the rope.17 It is noteworthy that bothBlack soldiers who were sentenced to execution were killed by fir-ing squads. No explanation was ever given for this departurefrom military custom. The other soldiers were hanged.All the executed men were buried at Schofield's post cemeterywithout ceremony. They are separated from the other dead by amock orange hedge, and their graves face away from the flag(fig. 2).FIG. 2. Schofield Barracks post cemetery, O'ahu. The graves of those executed, separatedby a hedge from the other dead and facing away from the flag. (Author's photo.)

A SHORT HISTORY OF HAWAIIAN EXECUTIONS I53It comes as a shock to learn that in the land of aloha, much ofthis institutionalized racism was given a seal of approval by one ofthe Territory's brightest and best-known intellectuals. StanleyPorteus, author of the informal Hawaiian history Calabashes andKings (1945), was also the co-author of a perfectly disgusting vol-ume called Temperment and Race.18 In it, he said Australian Aborig-ines were nearly on a par with "the idiot or imbecile." Filipinoshad "a list of racial defects," Hawaiians were unstable anddimwitted, Portuguese were "impulsive, irresolute and excit-able," and Puerto Ricans were "largely selected from amongstthe most undesirable strata of the population" and were "proba-bly the worst timber for citizenship." He gave much advice onhow to maintain "Nordic strongholds in America and Austra-lia. . . ." (Porteus also noted that the Aboriginal invention of theboomerang was probably an accident.) The American "negro"(he refused to capitalize the word) belonged to an inferior race,had low "brain weight," and failed "to avail himself to the full ofeducational opportunities that are afforded him."19His book came out in 1926, during a lull in executions. In theyear following its appearance, there were four executions, all ofFilipinos, a race that Porteus wrote was "in an adolescent phaseof development" and generally "unstable."20The Mainland's record on executions has been equally racist.The Los Angeles Times notes in its October 18, 1988 issue:The only convincing explanation for the persistance of executionshere is race. Almost half of the approximately 2,000 inmates nowon Death Row belong to minority groups. Blacks make up 40% ofexecuted persons. Studies consistantly show that killers of whitesare much more likely to receive death than murderers of blacks; nowhite has been executed for killing a black. In the last decade allexecutions of persons who did not consent to die have occurred informer slave-holding states.21In 1957, the law changed in Hawai'i. House Bill 706 revised theact relating to capital punishment by providing "a sentence ofimprisonment at hard labor for life not subject to parole." Thelegislature passed the bill on June 4, 1957. Governor Samuel King,

154 THE HAWAIIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORYwho was part-Hawaiian, signed HB 706 the following day, thusabolishing the death penalty. The bill became Act 282 and savedseveral men from the gallows.22James Majors and John Palakiko were due to be hanged in 1951,but Governor Oren Long had stayed their executions. GovernorKing, who succeeded Long, commuted their sentences to life inAugust 1954. By signing HB 706, King also saved the hangmanthe chore of dispatching Sylvestre Adoca and Joseph K. Josiah.Adoca had butchered his two daughters to death with a boloknife. Josiah had beaten a man to death in a payroll robbery.23But the public occasionally clamors for a return of the noose. In1976, a Honolulu Advertiser survey found 67 percent in favor of rein-stating the death penalty. In 1978, it was 65 percent. In 1982, it wasagain 67 percent. The paper noted that feeling was particularlystrong among Republicans, 76 percent being pro-execution.When the legislature has reconsidered the issue, the proposal hasrarely gotten out of committee.24In 1868, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser ran an editorial entitled"Capital Punishment." Not surprisingly, the paper was for it.25But a scant five years later, an editorial under the identical titlestated:. . . calmer reflection reminds us that vengeance is not for man,and that prevention and security are all that are required of ourpenal laws. . . . The time may be far distant when murders willcease; but we doubt it will come any the sooner for the practice ofstrangling to death those who are convicted at the bar of humanjustice.26

The execution room is now a dormitory at "Oh-Triple-See" —OCCC, the O'ahu Community Correctional Center—and   thehole  of the trapdoor has been cemented  shut