Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/216

 The Recent Zola Trial. gan by saying: "I am a writer and unac customed to public speaking, and I am an extremely nervous being. The attorney gen eral does me an injustice when he says I place myself above law. I submit to it completely, but I protest that the selected fifteen lines I am to be tried upon out of my long letter makes an injustice, and I say a writing is consecutive and that such a hypo critical method is unworthy of law." Here Advocate Labori ejaculated, "Bravo!" and the attorney general calling him to order, he rejoined, "that was the cry of my con science," and argued to the judge, "we ac cuse the counsels of illegality, but how can we defend if we are forbidden to prove the illegality? " But the judge firmly refused to permit any evidence about the Dreyfus trial. Next, witnesses were called by the defense, for as Zola admitted the publication of the letter the direct evidence was to be entirely in his behalf. Another peculiarity of French procedure now became noticeable. Instead of formulating a question subject to any objection from the opposite counsel, such question begins, as addressed to the judge : " Will you ask the witness " (recit ing the question), and if the judge thinks the question irrelevant or objectionable he at once refuses to put it. Thus French lawyers can ingeniously frame argumenta tive questions favorable to their side which the jury hear even if these cannot be answered. As witness after witness was called each one really, instead of testifying strictly to facts within their own knowledge, were allowed hearsay observations, and in some cases to express opinions or practically make speeches to the jurors. The judge would frequently interrupt testimony with an interlocutory question, when Advo cate Labori would as frequently petulantly cite Article 3 1 5 of the Code, giving the right to witnesses of testifying to their story with out being interrupted. The trial report shows throughout alter cation upon altercation between judge and

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counsel, with " keen encounter of wits,"— Zola often putting in, unrebuked, pointed and witty sallies which the audience would hiss or cry " a bas Zola " or " sputare," which meant spit on him. Once in a while the judge would threaten to clear the room, but he never did so, and Zola's foes kept up running comments like the chorus in a Greek play. In order to get an exception Advocate Labori would have to make a motion for a ruling and, if denied, the denial, ipso facto, reached the appellate or cassa tion court. Counsel Labori was also allowed to al tercate with several of the witnesses and seemingly, from the report, the Saxon rule prohibiting counsel from discrediting his own witness, is not enforced in France. One of the witnesses retorted to Zola's counsel, " your questions are traps," where upon M. Ployer, the leader of the bar, who was a spectator, rose and advancing to the front, called the witness to order for attack ing a member of the profession. Where upon the witness said : " Under the influ ence of excitement my words exceeded my thoughts," and the apology closed the inci dent so novel to an American. In the course of the examination of Gen eral Mercier of the War department, he vol unteered the comment: " I say upon my word, as a soldier, that Dreyfus was a traitor who was legally and justly condemned." Advocate Labori deftly seized upon the answer as now opening the illegality of the Dreyfus case, but the judge was inexorable. The minister of justice being called as witness, was permitted to make an address (although called testimony) to the jury that consumes three printed pages in the report and which ingeniously defended the Dreyfus conviction that had been ruled out. Inquisitor de Clam being a witness and declining to answer questions on the ground of military privilege, an undignified dialogue between Labori and judge intervened, dur ing which the latter asked of the former,