Even the judicial system was not immune to such pressure and temptation. When I did research for the 2005 PBS documentary "The Massie Affair," I was both stunned and appalled at the lengths to which otherwise influential and respectable people in the then-U.S. Territory of Hawaii would go in their efforts to manipulate due legal process in order to secure a desired outcome.

In one instance, a Honolulu grand jury was stacked with "respectable citizens" - aka, white men -- to inhibit and possibly preclude the indictments of Grace Bell Fortescue, a prominent Washington socialite and an heiress to the Bell Telephone Co. fortune, and her dutiful son-in-law Lt. Thomas Massie, USN, for felony murder in what became the second of the two criminal trials constituting the now-notorious Massie Affair.

Mrs. Fortescue and Lt. Massie had admittedly shot to death a young Hawaiian man named Joseph Kahahawai, who had been falsely accused by Thalia Massie - Mrs. Fortescue's 20-year-old daughter and Lt. Massie's wife -- of having taken part in her alleged gang-rape. He had been kidnapped by them as he emerged from his weekly reporting to his probation officer.

Further, Mrs. Fortescue and Lt. Massie were literally caught en flagrante by Honolulu police officers after a long car chase, whereupon officers found Kahahawai's body wrapped tightly in a bed sheet in the back seat of Mrs. Massie's car, in what was a rather clumsy attempt to dispose of the body at the Halona Point Blowhole on Oahu's southeastern shore. (Check out Grace Fortescue's arrest report and accompanying mug shot. Priceless.)

It was clearly an open-and-shut case, yet despite the overwhelming evidence of their complicity in a savage crime, the grand jurors twice voted to not indict either of them for the young man's death. In arriving at that ludicrous decision, they ostensibly relied on Mrs. Fortescue's absurd contention that she and her son-in-law were merely trying to aid the local police by seizing Kahahawai and getting him to confess his guilt in her daughter's alleged gang-rape. Never mind the six-mile police chase and the wrapped body in the back seat.

It was then that the presiding judge, the Honorable Albert Christy, who had suspected that the process had been rigged as such through possible bribery and most certainly coercion of grand jury members, refused to accept the grand jury's reports. Instead, he angrily marched down the hall and confronted the grand jurors personally, intimidating enough of them into issuing some very reluctant indictments for second-degree murder and kidnapping by a vote of 12-8.

In another earlier instance during that same shameful scandal, the Honorable Alva Steadman, the presiding judge who conducted the first criminal trial involving Kahahawai and the four other defendants who'd all been accused by Mrs. Massie of gang-rape, later admitted to a New York Times reporter that he had done everything in his power to assist prosecutors in securing the defendants' convictions, despite his own strong suspicions that they were really innocent and that Mrs. Massie had likely perjured herself in his courtroom.

He did so, he said, "even though I never felt quite right about it," because Mrs. Massie was an otherwise "respectable white woman" and the wife of a naval officer (not to mention the daughter of that aforementioned Bell Telephone heiress), while the defendants were Native Hawaiian and Asian-American from the poor side of town, and thus entirely disposable in his eyes.

Judge Steadman saw his duty as defending the interests of the white oligarchy and the U.S. Navy, rather than seeing that justice was actually served. And that meant placating Adm. Yates Sterling, Jr., the perpetually outraged and bullying commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the 14th U.S. Naval District, who was hellbent on securing a conviction in the case and avenging white womanhood. Adm. Sterling went so far as to threaten territorial officials with the imposition of martial law, if prosecutors were unable to convict the defendants.

As part of my research, I had to read the entire original transcript of that first trial -- territorial officials had somehow managed to "disappear" the transcripts of the second trial, and at the time I was engaged for this project only select unofficial snippets of those transcipts were then available -- and geez, talk about having one's thumb on the scales!

I can assure both you and Jeralyn that as veteran defense attorneys, you would have likely stood up screaming and torn your hair out in the middle of the courtroom floor, were you to be compelled to endure the judicial and prosecutorial misconduct that defense counsels William Heen and Bill Pittman had experienced in November and December of 1931. As it was, I find it amazing that they were able to hang the jury at 7-5 in favor of an acquittal.

And this didn't happen way back in the 19th century. The Massie Affair took place at a time when my grandparents were young adults, and my aunts and uncles were children. (My mother was born in 1934.) It was an era when the powers-that-be in this country still generally had their way, while those less fortunate had little or no opportunity to seek legal redress for any wrongs which might be visited upon them by those same powers-that-be.

So, to the extent possible that we can prevent our United States Supreme Court from becoming a de facto rubber stamp for a regressive right-wing agenda that would turn the clock back to just such a time, we should strive to do so with every moral fiber of our beings. Certainly, we owe it to our children and grandchildren to make that effort, and to further undertake this task seriously.

As a college student at Columbia, Neil Gorsuch defended the Iran-Contra scandal, slurred those who protested South African Apartheid government, scorned black like the NAACP, and attacked progressive activists. In his adult life, his family pedigree gained him entry into some rather exclusive circles in Colorado, and he secured the support of the reactionary Coors family while he rose through the state's conservative ranks.

As a federal appeals judge, Gorsuch has sided time and again with corporate interests, is on record in support of capital punishment, is fully supportive of limits on tort liability and voting rights, and is very strongly suspected of harboring a desire to further restrict a woman's right to freedom of reproductive choice.

Is this really the sort of man we want to take up space on the bench of the United States Supreme Court for the next 30 years? I don't think so, and I have no intention of consigning myself to that inevitability if I can do something about it. I don't need to do any more research. What I've seen about both him and the disturbing history of white privilege is bad enough. I find it imperative that we do whatever we can to see that his nomination is effectively bottled up in the U.S. Senate.

P.S.: And whatever happened to Grace Bell Fortescue and Lt. Thomas Massie, that aforementioned Bell Telephone Co. heiress and her son-in-law who were indicted for murder in the lynching of 20-year-old Joseph Kahahawai?

On April 29, 1932, despite a strident defense offered by the great Clarence Darrow in what proved to be his final courtroom appearance in a storied 50-year career, they and the two Navy enlisted men who participated in their homicidal scheme were all found guilty of manslaughter. Each defendant was sentenced to the mandatory 10 years' hard labor in the territorial prison, and remanded to the custody of the U.S. Navy pending their transfer to territorial officials.

And following a phone call five days later from President Herbert Hoover, Hawaii Gov. Lawrence Judd - a presidential appointee, as were all territorial governors back then -- dutifully commuted the sentences of all four defendants to one hour each, which they then served together on May 4, 1932 in the governor's office at Iolani Palace in downtown Honolulu.

According to Mrs. Fortesue, they all had tea and a most delightful conversation with Gov. Judd, Honolulu Sheriff Gordon Ross, Mr. Darrow and members of the defense team, and reporters from U.S. mainland publications who were in town to cover the trial. It had been, according to some at the time, the trial of the century. That is, until the next one came along.