Constitutional Law: Puka Bill’s Gift to Samoa

American Samoa is a U.S. territory 2,300 miles southwest of Hawaii. Like other offshore outposts, including Guam and the Virgin Islands, it is run by the Interior Department and has a U.S.-appointed Governor—H. Rex Lee, an Iowa-born farm economist. In light of its status, how far does the U.S. Constitution cover American Samoa?

In Pago Pago on the Fourth of July, a 400-lb. U.S. construction worker, William C. Brown Jr., better known as Puka (Fat) Bill, was arrested without a warrant for threatening to shoot the Governor. The alleged threat had been made at a private party eleven days before. Held incommunicado for 48 hours, he was charged with violating American Samoa’s sweeping civil rights law by “intimidating” Governor Lee in “the free exercise or enjoyment of his constitutional right to life, liberty or property.” Possible penalty: three years in jail, a $1,500 fine or both.

Visiting in American Samoa was George A. Wray of Washington, D.C.’s prestigious law firm, Rhyne & Rhyne. Fascinated, Wray took Brown’s case. At the trial last month, he raised a crucial question: Is Samoa’s civil rights law constitutional?

As Wray noted, the Constitution does not “spontaneously” cover all U.S. territories. For example, the Supreme Court upheld mainland duties on Puerto Rican imports in 1901 (Downes v. Bidwell) because the Constitution’s revenue clauses forbid such barriers only between states. But in that same case, Wray added, the court held that other clauses “providing fundamental personal liberties and basic rights automatically go everywhere with the flag.” Thus applicable to territories is the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process. And “due process” means, among other things, that a criminal law must be clear and specific enough for people to know what it covers.

Wray’s argument was enough for Samoa’s Chief Judge Arthur Morrow, 71, former dean of Iowa’s Drake University Law School. Amazing the lavalava-clad spectators, Morrow declared the Samoan civil rights law null and void. Moreover, at Wray’s request, Judge Morrow approved the arrest of Governor Lee’s prosecutor for arresting Brown without a warrant (possible penalty: a $500 fine, a year in jail or both). Said one sober Samoan as he left the courtroom: “We now know that the American Constitution means something in American Samoa.”