Page:The "Trial" of Ferrer - A Clerical Judicial Murder (IA 2916970.0001.001.umich.edu).pdf/26

 rer. It was therefore of urgent necessity to hurry the trial through, cost what it might, and it was hurried through, indeed before the bewildered public came to itself and un- derstood the trick that had been played upon it. But the prosecutors of Ferrer did not rest content with having Ferrer tried separately as they knew that an ordinary cizil tribunal would not have allowed such a speedy trial, and, above all, it would never have condemned Ferrer on such insufficient evidence as was brought in. So they had him transferred from the civil to the military courts. The military law is much more severe than the civil law; its penalties much more drastic and its mode of procedure at trials affords much fewer guarantees to the accused. How- ever, they had to find some pretext to proceed to such an important step, and this they found by declaring that the sedition which Ferrer was accused of. having organized, had been a military rebellion. But the Military Penal Code defines very explicitly what constitutes a military rebellion. Article 437 says that there must be a taking up of arms shared in by bands organized militarily.* Now the armed groups of strikers which went through the streets of Bar celona could hardly be compared to the bands of insurgents which are formed during political insurrections; however, this is a controvertible point, but the indisputable fact re- mains that they were not organized militarily. The prose- eution passed over that, and Ferrer was tried by a military triounal. The "Council of War," as this tribunal is called in the Latin eountries, convened on October 9, 1907, ander the presideney of Lieutenant-Colonel Eduardo de Aguirre Lacalle. The public was admitted. After the hearing ot How necessary to the exist- mee of a miltary rebelllon this Sondition Js, is Bbown by three dlterent sentances pronounced the Spanteh Sapreme Court on di- erne ocoaslona. recordtes the competence of the military court in the case of a band of Carlists conslasting of more than ten men, with titles of Brigadter-General, of Etat Major, two commendments and three degrees of officers. uary 7, 190i.) One of these (Jan-