Editorials
Saturday, August 28, 1999Confessions were key
to Pauline convictionDESPITE the paucity of physical evidence, a Big Island jury has convicted the first of three defendants scheduled to stand trial in the brutal Christmas Eve 1991 murder of Dana Ireland. Frank Pauline Jr. faces a mandatory sentence of life with the possibility of parole, but public outrage about the crime makes it unlikely that he ever will be released.The issue: A Big Island jury has convicted Frank Pauline Jr. in the slaying of Dana Ireland.
Ireland, a 23-year-old recent graduate of George Mason University in Virginia, was accosted while riding her bicycle along a coastal road in Puna and viciously raped and murdered.
Frustration grew as authorities took years tediously gathering and examining evidence in the case. No DNA evidence was found to match any of the three men accused of the crime, leading authorities to conclude the DNA samples recovered from the scene came from an unknown fourth assailant.
During his trial testimony, Pauline, who had been convicted previously on unrelated robbery and sexual assault charges, was casual in recanting numerous confessions to police, fellow prison inmates and news reporters. He showed no more emotion when the verdict was read.
His explanation of his confessions lacked credibility, and the little physical evidence available substantiated his involvement in the Ireland killing.
In statements he recanted at trial, Pauline said he struck Ireland on the head with a tire iron after she had been run down by a car driven by Albert Ian Schweitzer, whom Pauline implicated along with his brother, Shawn Schweitzer. He accused the Schweitzer brothers of sexually assaulting Ireland but denied doing so himself.
On the witness stand Pauline denied even being at the scene of the crime, but witnesses said a T-shirt soaked with Ireland's blood and recovered from the crime scene had belonged to him. The prosecution also maintained that Pauline's confessions included details that he could have known only if he had been involved in the crime.
The prosecution still has two trials pending in the case: Albert Ian Schweitzer in November and Shawn next March.
In those cases, the prosecution will lack the confessions that were central to the outcome of the Pauline trial.
Pauline's conviction provides no indication of the outcome of those trials. Indeed, the prosecution's task may be more difficult unless it can produce evidence beyond that introduced at the Pauline trial.
Abuse of aborigines
AUSTRALIAN Aborigines who are trying to win compensation for a decades-long program of taking mixed-blood Aboriginal children away from their parents have experienced a setback. A judge rejected a test case, arguing in part that he could not impose 1990s morality on Australia of the 1940s.
New South Wales Supreme Court Judge Alan Abadee said, "Irrespective of today's standards it was felt in the 1940s that assimilation of Aborigines into the community was in the best interests of the Aborigines."
The decision coincided with passage by Parliament of a motion introduced by Prime Minister John Howard declaring that the legislature expressed "deep and sincere regret" for 200 years of mistreatment of Aborigines.
Two years ago a human rights commission report termed the past assimilation policy a form of genocide and called on the Australian government to apologize and pay compensation.
Tens of thousands of mixed-blood Aboriginal children were taken from parents under a government-sanctioned assimilation policy from the 1880s to the 1960s under the belief that the Aborigines were doomed and that this was the only way to save the children. The commission reported many cases of physical and sexual abuse of the children.
Despite the declaration of regret, Howard came under immediate fire from Aboriginal leaders, who said only a full apology would be acceptable. An attempt to include the word "sorry" in the motion had failed. The prime minister's reluctance to issue an apology has been seen as an attempt to head off claims for compensation.
The 386,000 Aborigines represent 2.1 percent of Australia's 19 million population. They are its most disadvantaged group. Aborigines are more than twice as likely to die at birth than other Australians and are more likely to experience a life of poverty, disease and crime.
Two other Aborigines currently have a "Stolen Generation" compensation case against the national government under way, and about 1,500 are beginning legal action. It isn't clear what effect the unfavorable decision in the first case will have on the other cases.
The motion passed by Parliament reaffirms Australia's "whole-hearted commitment" to reconciliation. It pledges the nation to deal with the social and economic disadvantages experienced by many Aborigines.
But the court ruling and the criticism of the parliamentary declaration illustrate the difficulty Australia is having in coming to terms with its history of oppressive treatment of its indigenous people.
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
