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David Shapiro
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By David Shapiro

Saturday, November 6, 1999


Should the eighth victim
have been Uyesugi?

WHEN police found Byran K. Uyesugi sitting in his van in upper Makiki after allegedly gunning down seven coworkers at the Xerox building, I heard several people express the same thought: "I hope he blows his brains out and saves us the trouble of putting him on trial."

Even his own father's first instinct was to decline a police invitation to go with them to try to talk his son into surrendering. "I would tell him to shoot himself," the devastated father was quoted as saying.

Xerox massacrePolice, helped by Byran Uyesugi's brother Dennis, used patience and skill to get Uyesugi to give up peacefully after five hours of negotiations. Even after the successful outcome, police took criticism in some quarters for not having SWAT team riflemen take out Uyesugi as soon as they had a clear shot.

"He's my brother," said Dennis Uyesugi, who sent Byran a tape urging him to surrender without further injury to himself or others. "What he did was wrong -- terribly wrong -- but he's still my brother. I'm glad he's OK."

Unspeakable crimes bring out powerful emotions that vary along religious, cultural, generational and even political lines.

For many in the Judeo-Christian culture, suicide is the easy way out and an unthinkable act of cowardice. Catholics, in particular, believe the sinner can find salvation only by confessing his or her sin and taking responsibility for the action.

In some traditional Asian cultures, people believe that once somebody has irrevocably disgraced himself and his family, suicide is not an act of cowardice, but the only brave and honorable thing to do.

Political liberals and religious groups who oppose the death penalty believe there is no human being beyond redemption, no matter how heinous the crime.

Many political and religious conservatives, on the other hand, believe a cold-blooded murder can end acceptably only with the killer's death. They prefer that it happen at the hand of the state, but few shed tears when Andrew Cunanan took his own life after his murderous spree that ended with the death of designer Gianni Versace.

It's not a new or easy issue, as several well-known cases showed.

GRACE Kotani, who murdered state legislator Roland Kotani, her estranged husband, did the "right" thing by both eastern and western cultures.

She went to the police, confessed her crime and took responsibility for her actions. Then she excused herself to the ladies' room, removed a pistol she had hidden in a tampon box and took her life.

O.J. Simpson neither confessed his sins nor ended his life. While police sought him for slitting the throats of his ex-wife and her friend, Simpson pathetically drove around Los Angeles with a gun pointed at his head but couldn't muster the nerve to pull the trigger. Then he got a smart lawyer and patsy jury and beat the rap.

Who was the more honorable of the two? Most people would probably mourn Grace Kotani's death and curse O.J. Simpson's miserable life on the Florida golf links. But what was the source of Kotani's "honor?" Was it the confession, the suicide or the combination of the two?

In the latest case, it's difficult to see Byran Uyesugi living out any kind of meaningful life, but you never know. The one certainty is that there would have been no purpose served by his death. Police deserve kudos for keeping their cool, cutting through the emotion and doing their job very well.



David Shapiro is managing editor of the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at editor@starbulletin.com.

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