Talk:Massie Trial

Bias

This article suffers from extreme bias of information, with several quotes placed within the text lacking any sourcing or context. The opening actually says that the men "got away with murder". Also, the article lacks a large degree of Wikification.--24.16.206.32 09:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Huh?

They, the Massie's, which you refer to as "the men" (Kahahawai?), DID get away with murder. They killed the guy, got caught, admitted to it, and their only punishment was that they had to drink tea before leaving town. Would you not describe this as "getting away with it"? I would, and I think most people would.

It would also seem odd that you would claim this article shows "extreme bias". Did you even read any of the articles linked to at the bottom? If anything, the article here does not report some of the more extreme cases of racial injustice that came out during the case. Perhaps you find the very reporting of this racism "biased", but that would be a rather nieve point on which to stand.

And I don't even know what "context" you claim is missing. This was the era of yellow journalism, these sorts of stories were common. The sources are contained in the linked articles.

Maury 15:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Listing of the sources in this article would be far preferable. The Advertiser article, sadly, offers very little additional sourcing. I found another article by Judge Charles A. Riccio, Jr., at the Colorado State Patrol Academy, containing his own in-depth analysis of the Massie Affair. How much of his story is accurate, I can't say, but I suspect that the writer of Blood & Orchids, the CBS-TV/Lorimar Productions mini-series based on the case, heard some of the same rumors that Judge Riccio heard (about how Thalia actually came to get hurt, for example).

More to the point: does anyone seriously believe that Joseph Kahahawai, Horace Ida, and their three co-defendants actually committed the rape and assault of which Thalia accused them? Inter-racial rape does occur, but it's rare; the overwhelming bulk of rapes result when a man assaults a woman of the same racial/ethnic origin as himself. And Rear Admiral Stirling's conduct was disgraceful; I challenge anyone to allege anything in mitigation.--Temlakos 21:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

User:Nobody 19:00, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I was watching PBS and they said that Darrow's fee was $30,000, and that much of Darrow's wealth had been wiped out during the crash.

Much of what is considered unverifiable in this article can be verified by Dr. David E. Stannard's outstanding "Honor Killing: How the Massie Affair Transformed Hawaii" which is considered to date the most expert examination of the case. Additionally, as Dr. Stannard shows, multiple official and unofficial investigations of the Massie Affair and the murder of Joseph Kahahawai have shown (a) the alleged "rape" almost certainly did not occur and certainly did not occur at the hands of Kahahawai, Horace Ida and the other three men accused and (b) that the commutation of the Massies' sentence for murder was the result of political pressures.

Continuity?

The basic format of this article seems flawed, without use of recognisable breaks in order to allow a contents box to be established. Even if this were fixed, the whole article might need to be re-written anyway - an interesting topic, but completely let down by a lack of continuity. For example, referring to 'Thomas Massie' in the formal sense, then abruptly changing to "Tommie" seems a little unprofessional. --TwistedArcade 22:30, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Sources

A preliminary list of sources has been added here for review. Viriditas (talk) 08:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. It's good to have a starting point. As it happens, I had an opening in my reading, so picked up Stannard's "Honor Killing" at the library. Even if I don't make the time edit from that, I'll try to give an impression of how useful it may be. This article clearly needs serious cleanup and sourcing. IMHO (talk) 23:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The background contains a lot of conjecture and is not sourced. FlospyFlospy (talk) 02:13, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Top Importance

Though it's not coming out, I changed the WPHawaii importance tag from high to top for the Massie trial article. Top is referenced as being of "Statewide scope; multiple important subcategories; deeply reflects Hawaiian identity, life or culture. A "must-have" for Wikipedia:Version 1.0." The entire affair, from the original rape accusation to the repercussions of the Massie Trial itself affected not only the territory of Hawaii itself, but it's relation to the mainland and the perception by the mainland and the rest of the world. IMHO (talk) 21:44, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Unsourced edits removed

Please see Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research before adding comments like this. Aloha. W Nowicki (talk) 17:02, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Thalia herself said she stormed out because Tommy called her a 'bitch'...

The planning of the abduction was clearly pre-meditated, and the defense was that this was 'an honor klling', rather than a 'crime of passion'... The perhaps illogical intent was to seek to coerce a confession in order to have new evidence to present for a new trial... That Kahahawai was castrated with scissors prior to his being shot makes the 'crime of passion' version allegation a bit preposterous, in my view...

Helene Fortescue Reynolds, sister of Thalia, and daughter of Grace, and her god-son, Walter Booth Brooks, put together a stage-play, A Whim of Iron, which Helene later had put on off Broadway. That stage-play was provided to CBS in an attempt to gain its sale to be used for a screen-play, and was turned down. CBS then did its own version soon thereafter, Blood and Orchids, with that sarcastic disclaimer that any resemblance to actual people and events was purely coincidental. Both Helene Reynolds and Walter Brooks were "disappointed" at CBS' behavior.

Private investigators later determined who the actual rapists had been upon Thalia, and they were different people than those accused of the crime... The original defendants in the rape trial were actually innocent. While the slaying was described as a 'honor killing', it was the wrong people who were targeted for retribution...

By User:Jualt

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 00:15, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Massie Trial/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Complete rewrite needed, with attention paid to appropriate sourcing. —Viriditas | Talk 01:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 01:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 23:24, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Peter Van Slingerland/Slingland?

This author's name appears three times as "Peter Van Slingerland" and once as "Peter Van Slingland". Given the frequency I presume the former spelling is correct, but I don't know for sure, so I'll leave someone who does know to make the correction.31.15.247.228 (talk) 08:07, 22 September 2017 (UTC)