The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1892-05-09
v uLUKU WARBLINGS.
Full Account o. the Great Opium
Trial.
The Defendants Get Of-Was
the Prosecution Ruse?

(From Special Correspondent to the p. G.
ADVERTISED
The sensation of the month in this
town and island has been the opium
case against the three foreigners,
Brown, Williams and Johnson,
wherein great revelations were prom
ised by the police and expected by
the people. AS | write, the trial is
over and the discontinue of the
prosecution is complete. The prom
Uses of unmasked opium caches re-
main unfulflled, and in the words of
a man named Webster, who used to
live in my town-Boston, sit is not
the first time that the force and vigor
of the war have fallen short of the
lofty promise and sounding phrase
of the manifesto"
The history of this matter is al
ready in the knowledge of your read
ers, but brief review may not be
out of place, as culled from the evil
dence given in the Police Court of
this place on Friday, May 6. On
April "a the three defendants arrived
at Honolulu, from Kahului, on the
Claudine. In the afternoon of that
day, Sunday, there was handed to
Mr.. Boardman, deputy collector of
customs, at his home, by clerk of
Wilder's Steamship Go. named Sims,
a pocket book containing some notes
of hand aggregating about $1,000,
and signed by S. All Mi, of Kahului,
in favor of j. w. Brown. Mr. Board
mans evidence further showed that
the pocket book, when received by
him, contained a letter in an I'M
sealed envelope addressed to All Mi,
and which proved to be mere letter
from some Honolulu Chinaman in
Producing an unnamed "haole
friend" Also, that there were three
sealed envelopes, each addressed to
a Chinese firm in Honolulu, and
those sealed letters, Mr.. Boardman
testified, were rified Che used the
more moderate word-opened) by
command of the Marshal of the
Kingdom, in the presence of the
Collector General and his deputy
the witness. 1t was sought to have
those rifled letters read in evidence,
but defendants counsel, Mr.. @. w.
Ashford, protested most vigorously
and effectively against what he
termed the larceny of the officials,
and denied the right of the Govern
ment to avail itself of the criminal
ity of its own officers-who are paid
to execute the law and protect the
rights of the people-in the illegal
and criminal act of rifiing sealed
letters into whose possession they
had come by theft, as a means of Sc
curing evidence of much less deeply
criminal acts in others. The article
In the Constitution guaranteeing all
men against unreasonable searching
and Selling of their persons, their
papers and their effects, and the
penal code denouncing penalties
against all who detain, embezzle,
open, read or otherwise divert from
their true purpose any sealed or
unsealed letters belonging to others,
were cited and argued upon.
The Deputy Attorney General
who prosecuted the case, cited
with gusto of approval the acts Of
detectives in America who, he de-
clares, go to post Offices, ask for,
secure, open and read other peoples
letters, and then use those letters as
evidence against the parties, and his
sub-Excellency spoke glowingly of
the introduction of similar methods
into Hawaii g in the interest,"" as he
declared, "of justice, decency, NOR
atty, and the welfare of society"
Heaven forfend us against a prac-
tical application of the ideas of jus
tice, decency and morality" as now
entertained in the Offices of the Attor-
ney-General and Marshal in Homo
lulu, not to mention the Collector
General and his Deputy.
Well, after court and audience had
been saturated with law lectures, the
Court upheld defendants objection
to the reading of the contents of the
rifed letters, and the evidence for
the Grown proceeded. IL tended to
show that defendants cam, to Wal
4uhu MdlCA <OuY huu tll6b Uu0y, OT
some of them, said they had come
from Makena; that the following day
one of them took livery rig and
driver, and brought to Waikiki their
valises from an unoccupied house In
Honuaule that fishermen in that
locality had seen, during February
last, a red lantern burning in the
house of one of the native witnesses
for the Government now there that
in March a schooner, strange to the
observers, had been several times
seen in the vicinity of Molokini, Ka-
hoolawe, and Maizena, that defend
ants did not land at MAIZENA, from
the Kinau since February 22d last
that the bookkeeper at Waikapu had
found four half-pound Tins of opium
and smoking outfit in an unoccu-
pied laborer's house al Waikapu a
week or two ago that a half daft
old native had seen some men, one or
two of whom he took to be of de.
PENDANTS party, on the beach, and in
a house in Honuaula, some weeks
ago and that the signature to the
notes said to have been in the pocket
book was that of l.. All Mi, of Kahu.