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Editorials
Wednesday, June 14, 2000Uyesugi jury reached
the correct verdictCIRCUIT Court jurors took only 80 minutes at the end of a nearly month-long trial to reject Byran Uyesugi's insanity defense and convict the 40-year-old man of first-degree murder for the shooting deaths of seven co-workers at their Xerox offices on Nimitz Highway. The insanity defense is rarely successful. In Uyesugi's case it was an unlikely attempt to avoiding spending the remainder of his life behind bars. The jury's verdict was obviously not a difficult one.The issue: A jury has convicted Byran Uyesugi of first degree murder for the shooting deaths of seven Xerox co-workers.
The Uyesugi trial received extensive media attention but contained little drama. The verdict returned by the jury surprised no one, including defense attorneys.
The case was brought to trial in the most prompt manner possible, less than eight months after the copy machine repairman entered his place of employment and fired shots that stunned the community. Police later learned that Uyesugi owned 18 guns, including 11 handguns, five rifles and two shotguns, which he had been allowed by law to keep even after being denied a gun permit in 1994 after his arrest for criminal property damage.
Hawaii legislators in April irresponsibly rejected a proposal to change the law to prevent gun owners from maintaining their arsenals after becoming ineligible to obtain additional gun permits.
Uyesugi was a disgruntled employee who conjured up conspiracy theories to explain his frustrations. Defense attorneys maintained that he was suffering from a delusional disorder affecting his ability to tell right from wrong -- the legal standard for insanity. Uyesugi had undergone psychiatric treatment in 1993.
While Uyesugi unquestionably was mentally ill, jurors were quick to agree that he was capable of knowing that his slaughter of his co-workers was wrong. His methodical actions leading up to the shooting and his clear intention to kill certain employees but not others were important factors in the jury's decision.
Survivors of the victims can gain some solace from the verdict, but legal battles may continue beyond Uyesugi's Aug. 8 sentencing -- a mandatory life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.
Xerox allowed him to continue working at its facility after his 1993 confinement at Castle Medical Center. The state Occupational Safety and Health Administration plans to examine the situation, and some victims' families have contacted attorneys about initiating civil action against the company.
The case demonstrated that Hawaii's tranquility can be disrupted by the same outbursts of violence that have stunned various parts of the mainland. Legislators and law-enforcement agencies need to take measures in recognition of that painful reality.
Fatal errors
THE possibility that a person sentenced to death was wrongly convicted has been one of the principal arguments against the death penalty. The judicial process has been much more prone to error in capital cases than was assumed, according to a new study. It raises questions about how many innocent people have been sent to their death by the judicial system and whether the death penalty should be abolished as not only barbaric but subject to irreversible mistakes.
The study, conducted by lawyers and criminologists at Columbia University, found that two-thirds of the nation's death sentences were overturned between 1973 and 1995, prompting law professor James Liebman, who headed the study, to conclude the justice system is "fraught with errors." Fortunately, of the 5,760 death sentences imposed in the United States during that period, only 313 -- 5.4 percent -- resulted in execution.
The main reasons given by the study for the high reversal rate include "egregiously incompetent defense lawyers who didn't even look for -- and demonstrably missed -- important evidence that the defendant was innocent or did not deserve to die; and police or prosecutors who did discover that kind of evidence but suppressed it, again keeping it from the jury."
The study comes on the heels of a moratorium on the death penalty declared by Illinois Gov. George Ryan after he learned that 13 men had been released from death row because of new evidence. It also comes as state legislators are calling for studies on whether the death penalties have been fairly enforced in Nebraska, Indiana and Maryland.
The renewed controversy over the death penalty carries implications in the presidential race. Since presumptive Republican nominee George Bush has been governor of Texas, that state has conducted 131 executions. A Chicago Tribune investigation found that defense attorneys for 40 of the death-row inmates in Texas presented just one witness or no evidence at all during the trials' sentencing phase.
The American Medical Association this week rejected a proposal supporting a moratorium on executions but did call for "appropriate medical forensic techniques" to be used in capital cases. However, that is only one aspect of such cases that may be flawed.
Hawaii abolished capital punishment in 1957 and has declined to join the 38 states adopting it since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The study provides further reason not to restore capital punishment here.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
