Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/572

 THE BARILLAS CASE that I will die in Mexico first" (Morales having testified that Mora gave as the reason why he, Mora, did not himself kill General Barillas, was because he, Mora, was sick and not able to do it) . Mora: I did not say any such thing. Morales: I told him that I didn't know how the laws were here, that it was not possible to do it; to which Mora replied that as I had money in Mexico, I could have an assistant even here in the prison. Mora: Judge, I told him not to do it; that we had agreed that this should not be done, that he would not kill General Barillas. Judge: However, Mora, in the careo during the instruction you admitted that when Morales came to the house in San Larenzo Street, you asked him " Have you killed General Barillas yet." Mora: I never asked him anything. Judge: But here it is in the record; it appears here that you admitted this, and that you said that Morales, in answer to this question, replied to you that he had not been able to kill General Barillas because many people were present. Mora: But . . .No, sir. Judge: I am only repeating your decla ration. Morales says that you were always asking him that. Mora: I did not ask him; he told me that he wanted to kill General Barillas. Judge: Morales, you speak to Mora in regard to this. Morales (addressing Mora) : Why did you ask me why I had not killed General Barillas? Mora: I did not ask you anything. Morales: You asked me; otherwise I would not have told you anything. Mora: I did not ask him, Judge; but Morales told me that General Barillas had gone away. Morales: Judge, he kept after me to kill the General; that then we would be saved. Mora: I advised you not to, that you should not kill him.

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Judge: You, Mora, have always been telling a multitude of inaccuracies. Can it be believed that you came with the exclusive mission of taking care that Morales did not squander his money and to give it to him only a little by little? Why do you not tell the truth? Mora: No, sir; what Morales says is not true; I have always said the truth. Judge: It has cost Justice an enormous work to be able to make you two confess anything; you have said one thing and then another, from first to last. Mora: Judge, I was not commissioned to kill anyone; Morales says that because he wishes to defend himself. Nothing having been accomplished to wards arriving at the truth by this careo, during which the two defendants stood facing each other at arms length, glaring with looks of the intensest hatred one at the other, as if momentarily they would spring at each other's throat, they were ordered to resume their seats. They sat, still glaring at each other, while first the Judge, then one or another of counsel, kept up the crossfire of questions first to one then to the other, several times one or the other bitterly denying and denouncing some statement of the other defendant. Towards the close of an excited altercation between them, Morales said, in answer to a question, that Mora had not gone with him at any time to see General Barillas, as he, Mora, did not want Barillas to know him, so that he could kill him if Morales did not. Mora wildly denied this, using insulting terms to Morales, and crying, "Why do you keep on telling lies?" Morales exclaimed, "Ask for General Lima to testify!" The Judge replied: "Justice has already asked for General Lima." The foregoing sufficiently well illustrates the Mexican manner of examining witnesses, and the conduct of the famous careo. There is little left to be added to this already too long extended narrative. Dur ing the remainder of the afternoon, and