462
A
THE GREEN BAG
STUDY
OF
MEXICAN
ILLUSTRATED
IN
CRIMINAL THE
PROCEDURE AS
BARILLAS
CASE
By Joseph Wheless THE conduct and proceedings of a public criminal trial in our neighbor republic of Mexico, such as I have just had the fortune to witness, are all so different from our own common law system of criminal jury trials that I am certain much of interest as well as instruction may be had from the review of the famous trial of the assa sins of General Barillas, late President of Guate mala, which I am moved to write for the readers of the Green Bag, by my interest in the subject-matter and in the notable progress, juridical, intellectual and material, of the great and friendly republic to our south. Not only would I wish to interest my American readers by an account of a famous foreign trial as it was actually conducted before my eyes, but I would work into this narrative, written d plume volante, some what of more serious import, in a brief (and necessarily imperfect) comparative study of criminal procedure under the great system of the civil law, with our own common law administration of criminal justice. This will let us know something intimate of that most important public act, the sanction for the security of life and liberty, in the great Latin country on our borders, where so many thousands of our citizens are located and so many millions of our capital are invested, and may demonstrate that not all of scientific theory or effective practice is found in our Anglo-Saxon criminal juris prudence. The joint trial of Florencio Morales and Bernado Mora, accused of the assassination, on April 7th, 1907, of General Don Manuel Lisandro Barillas, ex-President of the Re public of Guatemala, began in the City of Mexico on Tuesday, June 4, 1907, and at midnight of Wednesday, June 5, sentence
of death had been pronounced, following a unanimous verdict of guilty, upon both of the unhappy tools of this notorious crime of "higher politics." No criminal process in Mexico in many years has been of such importance and such intense public interest, nor in its conduct and result so demon strated the high position to which Mexico has attained in the orderly and conservative administration of the laws. As stated with a show of justly self-reliant pride by one of the principal newspapers at the beginning of the trial: "Mora and Morales executed their infamous mission; Mexican justice is now going to comply with its duty." The facts constituting the corpus delicti were very few and simple, and will suffi ciently appear in the narrative of the trial, in which I chiefly wish to illustrate the more salient features wherein a common law lawyer will find most of interest for their novelty, a well as some food for thought along the lines of comparative jurisprudence and practice. Some description of the scene of the trial at the Palacio Penal, may lend interest. The court room is about one hundred and fifty feet long, wide perhaps fifty feet, high in ceiling, rather obscure and funereal in appearance, several tall windows admit ting a dim light from the street without. Within the railing which marks off the space reserved for the "Bar," there is an elevated staging entirely across the south end, upon which is the table and chair of the judge, secretary, and assistant; the judge sits behind the table facing the audience; at the end of the table to his right sits the secretary, and at the other end the assistant; the latter official, a young man, has to do with calling in the witnesses and other functions, while the secretary, a
