Justice.
My first experience of a court of justice in Hayti was a political trial. Four of the most respectable and respected inhabitants of Port-au-Prince were to be tried for their lives on a charge of conspiracy against the government of President Geffrard. My colleagues and I decided to be present. On approaching the courthouse, we saw a considerable crowd collected and some military precautions taken. Forcing our way through to some reserved seats, we found ourselves in a perfectly plain room,—a dock on the left for the prisoners, opposite to them the jury seats, behind a table for three judges, and a tribune for the public prosecutor.
After a few preliminaries, the trial began with a violent denunciation of the accused by the public prosecutor—a stuggy, fierce-looking negro with bloodshot eyes, named Bazin, who thought he best performed his duty by abuse. As one of the prisoners was a lawyer, all the bar had inscribed their names as his defenders, and they showed considerable courage in the task they had undertaken. On the least sign of independence on their part, one after the other was ordered to prison, and the accused remained without a defender.
The principal judge was Lallemand, of whom I have elsewhere spoken as combining gentleness with firmness; but he could scarcely make his authority respected by Bazin, the military termagant who led the prosecution. He browbeat the witnesses, bullied the jury, thundered at the lawyers, and insulted the prisoners. He looked like a black Judge Jeffreys. At last his language became so violent towards the audience, of whom we formed a part, that the diplomatic and consular corps rose in a body and left the court. I never witnessed a more disgraceful scene.
I may add that the prisoners were condemned to death; but we interfered, and had their sentence commuted to imprisonment, which did not last long; whilst their black persecutor, seized by some insurgents the following year, was summarily shot.[17]
This experience of the working of the trial-by-jury system did not encourage frequent visits to the tribunals, and afterwards I rarely went, except when some British subject was interested.
In the capital are the court of cassation, the civil and commercial courts, and the tribuneaux de paix; and in the chief towns of the departments similar ones, minus the court of cassation. In fact, as far as possible, the French system has been taken as a model. The form is there, but not the spirit.
The statistical tables connected with this subject have been very fully worked out in Major Stuart’s very interesting Consular Reports for 1876 and 1877. Here I am more concerned in describing how justice is administered. I may at once say that few have any faith in the decisions of the courts; the judges, with some bright exceptions, are too often influenced by pecuniary or political considerations, and the white foreigner, unless he pay heavily, has but slight chance of justice being done him.
In the police courts they know their fate beforehand. During my stay in Port-au-Prince foreigners avoided them, but sometimes they had unavoidably to appear. An elderly Frenchman was summoned before a juge de paix for an assault upon a black. The evidence was so much in favour of the white that even the Haytian magistrate was about to acquit him, when shouts arose in different parts of the court, “What! are you going to take part with the white?” and the Frenchman was condemned. So flagrant an abuse of justice could not be passed over, and the authorities, afraid to have the sentence quashed by a superior tribunal, allowed the affair to drop without demanding the fine.
An American black came one day to Mr. Byron, our Vice-Consul, and said he had been accused of stealing a box of dominoes from his landlady, and asked him to accompany him to court to see justice done him. Mr. Byron, knowing the man to be respectable, did so. The accuser stated that whilst sitting at her door talking to a neighbour, she saw her lodger put the box of dominoes into his pocket and walk off with it. She made no remark at the time, but next day accused him. The man denied having touched the box. The magistrate, however, observed, “She says she saw you; you can’t get over that,”—and had not Mr. Byron remarked that the prisoner’s word was as good as the accuser’s, being at least as respectable a person, he would instantly have been sent to prison.
A remarkable trial was that of two brothers, who were accused of having murdered a Frenchman, their benefactor. The evidence against them appeared overwhelming, and their advocate, a thorough ruffian, was at a loss for arguments to sustain the defence. At last he glanced round the crowded court, and then turned to the jury with a broad grin and said, “Après tout, ce n’est qu’un blanc de moins.” The sally produced a roar of laughter, and the prisoners were triumphantly acquitted by the tribunal, but not by public opinion; and the people still sing a ditty of which the refrain is, I think, “Moué pas tué p’tit blanc-là,”—“I did not kill that little white man.”
In 1869, among about fifty political refugees that lived for months in the Legation was one of the accused. I was standing watching him play draughts with another refugee, who did not know the name of his opponent, and he kept humming the song about the murder, and every time he made a move he repeated the refrain, “Moué pas tué p’tit blanc-là.” I noticed his opponent getting paler and paler. At last he pushed aside the board, started to his feet, and said, “Do you wish to insult me?” We were all surprised, when a friend called me aside and told me the story of the trial.
Though more attention has since been paid to words, the spirit of the old saying remains—that the whites possess no rights in Hayti which the blacks are bound to respect.
In civil cases bribery of the judges is notorious, and the largest or the most liberal purse wins. Most persons carefully avoid a lawsuit, and prefer submitting to injustice.
The judges, curiously enough, are rarely selected from among the lawyers. The Government can appoint any one it pleases, and as these posts are awarded for political services, those selected consider that the appointments are given to enable them to make their fortunes as rapidly as possible. As the pay is small, their wives often make it an excuse to keep shops and carry on a retail trade; but the fact is that the Haïtienne is never so happy as when behind a counter.
The active bar of Port-au-Prince is composed of very inferior men. I often heard my friend Deslandes address the courts. He was at the summit of his profession, and to have him for your advocate was popularly supposed to secure the success of your cause. And yet I heard this eloquent and able advocate, as he was called, whilst defending an Englishman charged with having criminally slain an American negro, drop the legitimate argument of self-defence, and weary his audience for a couple of hours trying to prove that the Englishman was an instrument of Divine Providence to rid the world of a ruffian. Naturally the Englishman was condemned.
Whilst in court the lawyers surround themselves with heaps of books, and continually read long extracts from the laws of the country, or—what they greatly prefer—passages from the speeches of the most celebrated French advocates; whether they explain or not the subject in hand is immaterial. I have often heard my French colleagues say that they have tried in vain to discover what these extracts had to do with the case in point. Few of these lawyers bear a high character, and they are freely accused of collusion, and of other dishonest practices. Unhappy is the widow, the orphan, or the friendless that falls into their hands. Many of my Haytian friends have assured me that, though they had studied for the bar, they found it impossible to practise with any hope of preserving their self-respect. No doubt the bar of Hayti contains some honest men, but the majority have an evil reputation.
The laws of Hayti are not in fault, as they are as minutely elaborate as those of any other country, and the shelves of a library would groan beneath their weight. Had M. Linstant Pradine been able to continue the useful publication he commenced—a collection of the laws of Hayti—it was his design to have united in a regular series all the laws and decrees by which his country was supposed to be governed.
Though a few young men of good position have studied for the legal profession in France, yet the majority of the members of the bar are chosen among the lawyers, clerks, and others who have studied at home. A board is appointed to examine young aspirants. It consists of two judges and three lawyers; and if the young men pass, they each receive a certificate of qualification, countersigned by the Minister of Justice. After this simple process they can open an étude on their own account.
One of the greatest difficulties of the diplomatic and consular officers in all these American republics is to obtain prompt and legal justice for their countrymen. Although the juge d’instruction ought to finish his work at the utmost in two months, prisoners’ cases drag on, and as the law of bail is unknown, they may be, and have been, confined for years before being brought to trial.
The President of the republic names the justices of the peace and their deputies, the judges of the civil and criminal courts, the courts of appeal, and the members of the court of cassation. All but the first-named judges are irremovable according to the constitution; but revolutionary leaders are not apt to respect constitutions, and during President Domingue’s time his Ministers upset all the old legal settlements. The last constitution, that of 1879, permitted the President to remove judges for the space of one year, in order that the friends of the Administration should be appointed to carry out their destined work.
It would be perhaps useless to describe in detail the other legal arrangements in Hayti, as they are founded on French precedents.