OFFSHORE

Is there something that Hawaii can teach the mainland? Something people of all races have learned from living together in such an isolated place? In the last episode of Season One, people from Hawaii tell personal stories about race relations and how to treat each other with aloha.

Five years, two trials, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees have failed to resolve Special Agent Christopher Deedy’s case. That hasn’t stopped supporters of the man he killed from pushing on. Will there ever be a resolution?

In even the most high profile criminal cases, there comes a point where the world moves on. But for the families of both the victims and the shooters, nothing is ever really normal again. Not even decades later.

After jurors deadlock in Special Agent Christopher Deedy’s first trial, the family of Kollin Elderts calls for a new prosecutor to be put on the case. And Deedy gets a new team of lawyers to start working on a different strategy.

But there are larger issues at play. Why is it so hard to convict cops in America? And, after losing in two trials, why won’t prosecutors just let Deedy’s case go?

Special Agent Christopher Deedy’s first murder trial begins in 2013. The stakes in the case were high. For Deedy but also for local prosecutors, who take an all-or-nothing approach to the case — placing all their chips on the table in a bid to lock Deedy up for life.

After a hung jury in the rape trial of five local Hawaiians, the family of the alleged victim looked for vengeance. They got it — by committing one of the most explosive crimes in Hawaiian history.

A privileged socialite. A Native Hawaiian wrongfully accused of rape. A ruling elite that favors whites. So begins the Massie Case. A story from 1932 that still impacts how some Hawaiians view the federal government. And Christopher Deedy.

Hawaii is the only state where whites have always been in the minority. There is this idea that people in Hawaii are racist against white people, that they hate the federal government. So, with a huge diplomatic summit taking place in Honolulu, tensions were high the week that Christopher Deedy shot and killed Kollin Elderts. Blocks away from the McDonald’s where their fatal confrontation took place, tanks had taken over a local park and protesters were out on the streets. There was a reason Deedy and dozens of federal agents were in town. And there were a lot of people who wanted them out.

Christopher Deedy and Kollin Elderts had never met before Nov. 5, 2011, when a 3-minute brawl ended with Elderts dead and Deedy in handcuffs. How did a Native Hawaiian born in the islands and a white federal agent who’d just arrived end up on opposite sides of a gun?

Reporter Jessica Terrell introduces the deadly events of Nov. 5, 2011 when federal security agent Christopher Deedy shot Hawaiian Kollin Elderts to death one night in a McDonalds. This story is tinged with historic suspicions around race, nationality and the presence of the US government in Hawaii. It sounds like current racial tensions around law enforcement and non-white victims on the US mainland. But the Deedy/Elderts case also carries echoes of a similar story going back to the eve of WWII.