Page:The "Trial" of Ferrer - A Clerical Judicial Murder (IA 2916970.0001.001.umich.edu).pdf/42

 40 THE "TRIAL" OF FERRER. According to the procedure followed in military trials, Ferrer chose his defender from among the names on a list of officers all unknown to him, and he chose Don Fran- cisco Galeeran Guardia because his first and last name wcre the same as his own, and this Ferrer hoped would be a good This officer did his duty nobly and presented as omen. good a defense as the short time allowed him for its pre- paration permitted. In this respect the procedure at mili- tary trials is extremely narrow. The defender thus chosen by the accused is apprised of the charges for the first time at the appearance of the accused beforc the Judga Instructor (when the latter informs the accused of the charges against him) and only then through the referenees to the evidence collected in the "summary," which the judge may see fit to make. The defender has then to im- provise on the spot his demands for testing of the evi- dence and particularly for the hearing of new witnesses. After that, aside from what his client may tell him, he does not know what the "summary" contains until he re- ceives the roll containing all the official documents. He is then given twenty-four hours to prepare his defense, although Art.:563 of the code provides that this time may be extended to the limit of ten days if the volume of the roll is very great. In this case the volume was extraor- dinarily great: 586 folios, forming 1,172 pages-yet no extension of time was allowed the defense. If we take one minute as the average time needed to read a page and di- gest its contents (some pages may have been read in a few seconds, while others would take a long time to study), it would have taken the counsel 1,172 minutes, i. e., 20 hours to read it. It would need a man with a head harder than diamonda to do that! And yet Senor La Cierva, imonthpiece of the Spanish Government, declared 'in an Jnterview with a correspondent of the London "Times,"