Trial without Jury in Guam, USA

Abstract

This article adds to the growing literature about how the Supreme Court's decisions in the Insular Cases affected the residents of the U.S. territories. It focuses on the territory of Guam, which lacked juries in both criminal and civil trials until 1956–nearly sixty years after the island became a U.S. possession. Residents of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Virgin Islands had limited jury trials, but Guam was left out due to its strategic military significance as well as racialized ideas about the capabilities of Chamorros, the native inhabitants of the island. This article recovers the struggle by Guamanians to gain jury trials. It argues that independence movements, like those in the Philippines and Puerto Rico, were not the only forms of resistance to American empire. Through petitions, court challenges, and other forms of activism, Guamanians pushed for jury trials as a way to assert local agency and engage in participatory democracy. For them, the Insular Cases were not just abstract rulings about whether the Constitution followed the flag; they deeply affected the administration of justice on the ground for ordinary Guamanians.

Popular Constitutionalism in the US Empire: The Legal History of US Citizenship in Guam

“…This would lead Chamoru life to revolve around small farms, producing crops such as corn and copra for survival, as "each household formed an independent, self-sufficient economic unit" (8). Land ownership for small-scale farming would thus become a central aspect of Chamoru culture, setting up later disputes with the US government over naval use of Guam's land and Guamanians mobilizing for the right to jury trials (Unterman 2020). Spanish colonization thus influenced Chamoru land customs and policies in ways that are important for better understanding why Guamanians later protested for US citizenship.…”

“…One of the first cases that demonstrated that US citizenship did not automatically extend to the unincorporated territories was Gonzalez v. Williams (1904), in which the Court determined that residents of Puerto Rico were not completely foreign in their relationship to the United States or US citizens, but something in between: noncitizen nationals (Erman 2014). 8 Other cases, such as Hawaii v. Mankichi (1903), Dorr v. United States (1904), and Balzac v. Porto Rico (1922), determined that even though certain nebulous and never explicitly defined “fundamental rights and liberties” applied in the unincorporated territories, this did not mean that the Bill of Rights or citizenship automatically applied in the unincorporated territories (Tauber 2006; Unterman 2020). And even after Congress formally extended citizenship to Puerto Rico with the Jones Act in 1917, the Court’s ruling in Balzac held that certain provisions of the Bill of Rights still did not apply in Puerto Rico.…”

“…As early as 1901, Guamanians sought constitutional protections against arbitrary US rule and made arguments for inclusion as equals within the US polity through citizenship (Leibowitz 1989, 318; Unterman 2020, 822). With no formal congressional action on Guam’s status during the period of military rule, a nebulous concept of “Guamanian citizenship” emerged, which had unclear requirements and constitutional protections 14…”

“…J.) Bordallo and Francisco Leon Guerrero traveled to Washington, DC, to deliver the 1933 petition to the US Congress (Unterman 2020, 823; Hofschneider 2001, 91–103; Hattori 1995, 59). Bordallo prepared a letter in which he emphasized an equality-based argument for Guamanian citizenship, explaining that Guamanians “are only concerned to the extent that our people be granted citizenship rights as have the people of Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands” (United States Congress 1937, 12).…”

“…The United States continued its authoritarian rule over Guam until World War II, when Japan invaded and then occupied the territory from December 1941 to July 1944. Japanese rule over Guam during World War II was cruel and dehumanizing: Chamorus were forced into concentration camps and manual labor, with “[e]xecutions, beatings and rapes … common,” as “the Japanese military treated Guam’s Chamorus as an enemy population” (Unterman 2020, 824) 19 . When Guam was liberated from Japanese control in 1944, the physical destruction to the island meant that most of the remaining Chamoru population, once released from Japanese concentration camps, had to be relocated from their homes (Leibowitz 1989, 312; Maga 1988, 197).…”